I will stand seemingly alone as a supporter of President Obama's strategy in Afghanistan. The opinion class on all sides has decided that he will fail before he has even had a chance to get the first cadet on the ground. I fellow named Josh Schrei (whoever he is) writes in the HuffPo: "It goes without saying that a troop escalation of this magnitude will empower and embolden the Taliban in Pakistan, in fact it already has. By pre-announcing the date of our withdrawal -- the daft equivalent in poker of betting all your chips while simultaneously showing your opponent your hand -- we have in effect told the enemy that if they can ride this escalation out for 18-months, they will have won.".
Now I'm not a student of military history and I'm guessing neither is Mr. Scherei. From my small view in the world what the President appears to be doing is trying to push the Taliban out of Afghanistan, into the Swat valley. If, the Taliban think they are on an eighteen month spring break, and go there voluntarily, power to them! Either way - Mission Accomplished! Once they are in the Swat Valley Obama will launch what I'm certain is plan b - a massive military blockade of both sides of Swat and aerial and drone operations into the valley regions. After all, the goals really are to get Bin Laden, destroy Al Queda and the Taliban.
The President needs the Afghan and Pakistani Army up to snuff in 18 months for that kind of operation to be achievable since US forces can't provide border security AND police those countries. And the US needs to show that it can clear and hold successfully in order to win.
I think we all know that The President is not going to give out operational and strategic plans in a speech. And, for all we know, he might have been providing false information to us all together to mislead our enemies (highly unlikely but you never know).
And then there's Russ Feingold coming at Obama on funding the surge from his left on ABC's This Week: "Well, that's difficult. And what's going to happen here is that it's probably going to be difficult to stop it now. We'll do whatever we can. We're already working with members of both parties in both houses to question whether this funding should be approved."
I love Sen. Feingold but I think his energy would be much better spent on a battle in the Senate that 1. can be won, and 2. he can make a difference on. Where is he on Health Care? The death of Ted Kennedy left a major abyss in leadership from the liberal side of the democratic party.