A failure of commitment

Amid the gathering malaise of the post-euphoria era of Barack Obama’s presidency, trouble is afoot in Afghanistan.

The commander of allied forces there wants more troops. Mr. Obama is disinclined to give them. Listen closely and one can hear echoes of the Soviet Union. Failure knocks and America opens the door.

Pause is warranted on Gen. Stan-ley McChrystal’s plan to reverse a slide toward American defeat in Af-ghanistan, but not for the equivocation that passes for reasoning from the president.

Mr. Obama prefers a quieter war, one fought with drones and less blood. For all of the countenances of disgust aimed by Team Obama at Gen. McChrystal over his leaked memo outlining his war strategy, the general does not prefer something radically different.

The war, he admonishes, is not America’s but Afghanistan’s, a thing Afghans themselves seem loath to recognize. It is ultimately a “war of ideas,” the general contends, which all wars in a sense might be and in another sense never are.

Gen. McChrystal aims to change “perceptions.” But there still is the business of defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida, problematic despite Afghan opposition especially to the former because of prevailing Muslim opposition to Western infiltration in an Islamic country.

America’s interest is in making plain that attacks like 9/11 will be met with swift, decisive force, which means currently crushing al-Qaida and the Taliban and in the future the threat of repeating that act.

Mr. Obama seems suddenly lost on this point after having declared repeatedly on the campaign trail that he’d be dedicated to winning in Afghanistan.

This dissembling has drawn the president increasing and justifiable fire from the right and it has inspired a feeling of empowerment among America’s enemies.

But Gen. McChrystal is not the champion of firm resolve some perceive him to be. He says that he needs 40,000 more troops to do the job and that Mr. Obama should acquiesce, but the president also needs to provide and demand clarity on what precisely the job is.

The president’s inclination, concealed somewhat when he sought votes, is to make nice while ignoring the implacability of his foes. Gen. McChrystal perhaps recognizes the president’s proclivities and has crafted a plan catered to them.

It would be better for America — and the men and women who fight for her — if both he and the president remembered that the idea of war not only is to conquer foes but to do so in a fashion that reminds them of the ramifications of selecting enemies unwisely.

Or else, get out altogether and be done with it.

As it stands now, America appears bent on attempting to gain victory not by the force war ordinarily implies but by means of persuasion. Mr. Obama possesses abundant skills on this front, but he errs badly if he presumes to be persuasive enough to assuage radical Islam.

For many soldiers of misfortune in Afghanistan, such an error might well prove fatal.

adapted from the Waynesboro News-Virginian