You don't have to be a pundit to grasp the challenges confronting Barack Obama in preparing his speech of Tuesday night. So beleaguered is he both at home and abroad that you can't even say with confidence that Afghanistan will prove his defining issue. What you can say is this speech not only could not please everyone, but was likely to satisfy almost no one.
The Afghan war is for Mr. Obama what the “war on terror” was for George W. Bush: the issue he didn't run on but can't run from. True, Mr. Bush could not have foreseen 9/11, while Afghanistan did surface in Mr. Obama's campaign speeches. Let's face it, though: No one voted for Mr. Obama because of his enthusiasm for the Afghan war. The Democrats' commitment to the conflict has long been suspect. Sure, they delighted in presenting it as the good war that Iraq was not, but only to flay the Bush administration. “Troops out of Iraq, troops into Kandahar!” Did anyone hear that chant at Mr. Obama's rallies?
And that was back before it was clear to most Americans how badly things were going in that faraway place, what a mess neighbouring Pakistan was, how dire the fiscal situation in which the war would now have to be waged, and how little help the United States could expect from all but a tiny handful of its allies. And Mr. Obama's capacity to overcome such formidable obstacles to persuasion has ebbed along with the standing he enjoyed in the early months of his presidency.
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