Being President is hard! I use to accuse my Democratic friends of acting like any idiot could be President as long as that idiot was not named George W. Bush.

Normally, I would agree with Programmer that putting 100,000 US troops that deep in injun country deserves careful analysis. The surge in Iraq capitalized on a lot of work building Iraqi security forces. Are the Afghan organizations at a similar point? I would think they would be by now, if ever.

But my skepticism comes from another source.

Perhaps the real problem President Obama faces in Afghanistan is that he was once Senator Obama. As Senator he voted for a Date Certain for defeat in Iraq (March 31, 2008) — and not just defeat, but a military rout of possible historic proportions for the “redeploying” US Army. At least that is how it would appear in the international media — withdrawing through a flurry of Suicide truck bombs which, if they couldn’t hit a convoy would happily take out a nearby school or market. Somehow this debacle under President Bush would make victory in Afghanistan more “doable” for a future President Obama. This attempt at “lawmaking” showed we have a political elite that would tolerate losing a war for short term political gain — and that politics ranks national security where Obama’s concerned. It is the pull of “left politics,” combined Obama’s own political calculations, that everyone is looking for.

Sometimes I point out to my Democrat friends that a US President that stands up for US interests is predictable (he’ll have some firm political backing at home) while one that stands up for world interest as defined by woolly minded Scandinavian intellectuals, not so much. Because the question becomes: when will he turn tail? (This is not to negate the doctrine of “Self-interest, properly understood” — which allows some forms of altruistic behavior — since that doctrine is still grounded in self interest.)