Obama's Afghan decision took Presidential courage in the face of feckless left-wing and right-wing opposition

President Obama addresses the Cadet Corps and the nation at West Point

President Obama has made the right decision to commit 30,000 more Americans troops to the fight in Afghanistan -- on top of the 20,000 additional troops he approved early this year -- to "finish the job" of defeating al Qaeda and its essential ally, Mullah Omar's Taliban. Obama said last year as a candidate that this is the "necessary war" and that he would finish it. He said it again in the spring. He said it again last night at West Point. With the two troop increases, Obama is more than doubling the number of U.S. combat brigades engaged in this fight -- from three to eight. He is also ramping up a more aggressive U.S. strategy to deal with the al Qaeda-Taliban sanctuaries inside the Pakistani tribal areas, where he has already greatly stepped up the tempo of CIA-led drone missile attacks. It's hard to see what else Obama needs to do to demonstrate that he takes his Presidential responsibility for national security seriously.

It was also a courageous decision in light of the certain attacks it would draw -- and has quickly drawn -- from both the deeply unserious pacifistic left wing of the his own party and the comically aggressive right wing of the GOP.

Interestingly, a good deal of the barbs from both sides revolved around Obama's setting out a flexible 18-month time frame for the Afghan surge. Senate Democratic dove, Russ Feingold, found this wanting because it was not a strict deadline for withdrawal: ”I do not support the president’s decision to send additional troops to fight a war in Afghanistan that is no longer in our national security interest. While I appreciate that the president made clear we won’t be in Afghanistan forever, I am disappointed by his decision not to offer a timetable for ending our military presence there." Meanwhile, Senate Republican hawk, John McCain, undermined his standing as a national security guru by immediately leading a GOP attack on Obama over the time frame without even a feeble effort at demonstrating bipartisan unity behind a President making a hard choice to send young men and women to war: “Then it makes no sense for him to announce the date,” Mr. McCain retorted. In short, he said, “that gives the wrong impression to our friends, it’s the wrong impression to give our enemies.”

Beyond Capitol Hill, the attacks were far more intense -- and almost stupefyingly simplistic and irresponsible. MoveOn.org is already pushing a petition to Congress to set a binding deadline for a U.S. withdrawal. Appearing on CNN's "Larry King Live" right after Obama's speech, radical activist Michael Moore called the U.S. presence in Afghanistan "insane" and claimed, in effect, that "there is no al Qaeda in Afghanistan." On the right, columnist Ralph Peters would win if there was a prize for the most hysterical nonsense for writing that Obama's 18-month time frame was a " presidential declaration of surrender." It's a mystery to me how or why Peters, a former Army officer, thinks that adding the firepower of five Army and Marine combat brigades since last spring won't have any effect on the Taliban, while Obama's setting a target date to begin shifting security responsibility to the Afghans will lead to a U.S. defeat.

Obama's formulation is straightforward, clear and compelling: This is a fight we did not ask for but must win for our own safety and security. It has gone on for a long time because we did not apply the necessary resources to it. We're going to do that now. The Afghans and others must do their parts as well. It won't take forever, and as President, I won't let it.

I find it hard to take issue with any of that. Americans of every political persuasion should back the President. There will be more than enough time to find fault if he fails.

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President Obama makes the right decision -- to finish the job in Afghanistan

OBL: Answer to the unserious question about Afghan war: "Why are we there?"

About an hour from this writing, President Obama will speak at West Point to explain his decision to send approximately 34,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan over the next nine months or so, with the first contingent to arrive by Christmas. His decision is already coming under intense fire from left-wing critics of U.S. military action who don't appear concerned about the devastating attacks on Americans launched by al Qaeda from their refuge in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan --except as a way to criticize the Bush Administration. At the same time, right-wing bloggers and talking heads are still damning Obama for taking "too long" to decide and for seemingly choosing a troop strength somewhat below that requested by the American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

Both of these lines of attack on Obama are at best foolish and at worst destructive. People on the left and the right have forgotten -- or choose to ignore -- the compelling reason for this war: Mullah Omar's Taliban government of Afghanistan not only gave refuge to and protected Osama bin Laden, so that he could plan and launch the attacks of 9/11. The Taliban were closely allied with al Qaeda, drew financial and logistical support from al Qaeda for their own war against fellow Afghans, and fought side by side with the literally thousands of al Qaeda's Arab, Pakistani, Chechen, Uzbek and other non-Afghan terrorists trained in bin Laden's Afghan camps. An American withdrawal from Afghanistan -- or a defeat in the field -- would result swiftly in Mullah Omar's return, the re-establishment of his "Emirate" government, and the reinstallation of of "Sheikh" bin Laden as an honored guest and crucial supporter of a renewed Taliban. Anyone who doesn't understand that this will happen as surely as the sun comes up in the morning is a fool -- or worse.

At the same time, the U.S. has no interest in conquering or occupying Afghanistan or in imposing on Afghans a style of government not of their own choosing. This is not World War II, there will be no "unconditional surrender," and the right amount of force must be used with extreme care. Too many on the right fail miserably to appreciate this.

We'll see soon enough if the new U.S. troop strength is sufficient and whether Gen. McChrystal's strategy -- as modified by the Administration's senior national security team and adopted by Obama -- needs further refinement. (In all military actions, planning is essential -- but so is flexibility in quickly changing plans to meet the actual conditions of the battlefield.) But right now, the President should have the support of everyone who wants to see this war end as quickly as possible with the job of defeating al Qaeda -- completely and permanently -- finished.

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Unbelievable provocation: Russians war game a nuclear attack on Poland!

Kaliningrad: A Russian enclave on Baltic between Poland and Lithuania

Coming hard on the heels of the Obama Administration's "reset" of US-Russian relations and scrapping of planned U.S. missile defense installations in Poland and The Czech Republic, Vladimir Putin's Russia has radically upped its pressure on Poland, the Baltic states and the rest of the former Soviet-controlled eastern Europe in a forceful assertion of what it regards as its rightful sphere of influence. Needless to say, Poles are upset by Russian war games that included a mock nuclear attack on Poland and an exercise in which troops stormed a "Polish beach," actually on the Baltic coast of Kaliningrad, the small Russian enclave between Poland and Lithuania:

The manoeuvres are thought to have been held in September and involved about 13,000 Russian and Belarusian troops.

Poland, which has strained relations with both countries, was cast as the "potential aggressor".

The documents state the exercises, code-named "West", were officially classified as "defensive" but many of the operations appeared to have an offensive nature.

The Russian air force practised using weapons from its nuclear arsenal, while in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, which neighbours Poland, Red Army forces stormed a "Polish" beach and attacked a gas pipeline.

The operation also involved the simulated suppression of an uprising by a national minority in Belarus – the country has a significant Polish population which has a strained relationship with authoritarian government of Belarus.

Karol Karski, an MP from Poland's Law and Justice, is to table parliamentary questions on Russia's war games and has protested to the European Commission.

His colleague, Marek Opiola MP, said: "It's an attempt to put us in our place. Don't forget all this happened on the 70th anniversary of the Soviet invasion of Poland."

The post-Soviet democracies, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, The Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia and Albania, are all NATO allies. Their ties to the West -- and particularly to the United States -- are their only guarantee of freedom from future domination from Moscow. For the past decade and a half, they have been able to count on strong U.S. support, even as the new Russian strongman, Putin, began to flex his muscles. Nothing has changed. There is nothing the West can or will get from Russia -- in the Middle East, Central Asia or anywhere else -- that would come close to offsetting the abandonment of half of Europe less than two decades after the collapse of Soviet power. President Obama must make chrystal clear to Russia that the West does not take kindly to Russian imperial revanchism .

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