And he still won’t make it up for weeks:
President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to send more than 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan next year, but he may not announce it until after he consults with key allies and completes a trip to Asia later this month, administration and military officials have told McClatchy…
…The plan would fall well short of the 80,000 troops that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, suggested as a “low-risk option” that would offer the best chance to contain the Taliban-led insurgency and stabilize Afghanistan.
It splits the difference between two other McChrystal options: a “high-risk” one that called for 20,000 additional troops and a “medium-risk” one that would add 40,000 to 45,000 troops.
The officials, all of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss internal administration planning, cautioned that Obama’s decision isn’t final, and won’t be until after administration officials discuss it with the NATO allies at a Nov. 23 meeting of the alliance’s North Atlantic Council and its Military Committee…
This has gone well beyond dithering – this has gone all the way up to vacillation; and there is no worse error a leader can make. To make any decision – even a bad decision – is better than making no decision at all. Obama seems deathly afraid of coming down on one side or another and the sense I get is that his aides are working it out amongst themselves and just trying to get something which will allow the issue to fade away, at least for a while.
The trouble is that real, flesh and blood American soldiers – as well as Afghans and allies – will have to pay a price for whatever decision Obama makes, or fails to make. People will die, no matter what Obama does – but upon Obama’s decision rides the answer to whether or not they’ll die in vain. We have a war which can be won and the troops are ready to win it – all they need is the word “go” from President Obama. What they might get is “maybe”.
Oh, for just an hour of President Bush back at the helm!
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