Should Obama Go 'All In' on Afghanistan?

Back in January when he took office, Barack Obama had amassed a very considerable pile of chips. Events since then have appreciably reduced that stack. Should he wager what remains on Afghanistan? That's the issue the president now faces.

The first true foreign policy test of the Obama presidency has arrived, although not in the form of a crisis coming out of nowhere announced by a jangling telephone at 3 a.m. Instead, a steady drip-drip of accumulating evidence warns that Afghanistan is coming apart.

Unlike his predecessor, Obama has by no means consigned Afghanistan to the back burner. Since becoming president, he has declared the war there both necessary and winnable. He has ordered an increase to the U.S. troop commitment. He has installed a new commander. In effect, Afghanistan has displaced Iraq on the Pentagon's list of priorities. Yet all of this has amounted to little more than temporizing.

The really big decisions have yet to be made. The biggest of all is simply this: Is the president willing to go for broke? Is he committed to Afghanistan as Obama's war -- committed as George W. Bush was to his war in Iraq? Is he willing to pull out the stops, regardless of the obstacles ahead, despite evidence of eroding public support and disregarding the fact that many in his own party oppose the war outright?