President Barack Obama's drawn-out decision-making on Afghanistan is sending messages. To the Afghan government: Clean up your act. To the Pentagon: I'm no rubber stamp. To the American public: More troops can't be the sole answer.
So what presidential messages are left out of this analysis?
Say, like the message to our enemies that we can't quite work up the courage to take them on?
Or the message to our allies that their sacrifices might be for nought since we might be about to bug out on the war and leave them hanging?
Or even the message to our troops fighting and dying in Afghanistan right now for a war that our commander in chief might decide is too nuanced to win? Oh, excuse me--the president wants an "exit strategy." You know what I think of that.
But no. Never mind those messages. The president is going to show those Pentagon generals who's boss.
And this would be amusing if it wasn't so at odds with our reputation:
Defense Secretary Robert Gates told reporters Thursday that the president was nearing a final decision, and he referred to one of the central questions Obama and his advisers have wrestled with for weeks.
"How do we signal resolve and at the same time signal to the Afghans and the American people that this isn't an open-ended commitment?"
Yeah, after retreating from Vietnam in the 1970s, Lebanon in the 1980s, and Somalia in the 1990s, plus the strenuous effort by our Left to lose in Iraq this decade, some people might not get that our military commitments aren't open-ended? Message sent and understood, I believe.
Send the message to friends and foes alike that we will destroy the jihadis who seek to kill us and that we fight until we win.
