During the presidential election campaign, Barack Obama maintained that Iraq was the wrong war for the US and Afghanistan was the right one.
Now he seems to be having second thoughts. But in one of the most stark warnings a field commander has ever delivered to his president, Gen. Stanley McChrystal has declared that, without a rapid infusion of more troops, the war will "likely result in failure." He is surely frustrated with White House ponderings about whether the US has the "right strategy" in Afghanistan.
Well, the strategy is pretty clear. It is to make Afghans secure enough to reject the Taliban and their Al Qaeda mentors.
As Margaret Thatcher once said to another American president, in another war, this is no time to "go wobbly." President Obama should approve the dispatch of additional troops to Afghanistan that McChrystal is requesting.
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