It's official: Afghanistan is President Obama's war.
In a speech Tuesday night short on passion but sound on policy, the president took his top general's advice and initiated a surge in the war in Afghanistan that he hopes will roll back gains made by the Taliban. That involves sending 30,000 more American troops to that war-ravaged nation.
It's the right policy, even if the president later fails to convince our western European allies to up their commitments in Afghanistan. In plain language, the Taliban are a threat to the world. If allowed to regain power in Afghanistan, the Taliban will provide a base for al-Qaida, just as it did prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
Also, a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan poses a dire threat to Pakistan. We cannot allow instability to threaten the government of Pakistan, which has nuclear weapons. The consequences of a Pakistan controlled by Islamic terrorists could be horrific.
In his somber speech, Obama offered a three-level strategy for defeating the Taliban and al-Qaida. First is a military surge to regain control of Taliban-controlled areas in Afghanistan. The first 9,000 deployed troops will be sent to the dangerous southern Afghanistan area around Kandahar. It will be a hard job for the allied troops, but these additional forces should be sufficient to regain control of population areas and adequately train Afghan police and troops.
Second, the surge will allow civilian governments in Afghanistan to clean up their acts and become less dysfunctional. This responsibility starts with a reform of the corrupt administration of Aghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai. This is Karzai's last chance. The president made it clear in his speech that there is a deadline for U.S. troops to leave Afghanistan -- July of 2011. We hope Karzai understands that he will be abandoned if he fails.
The third part of Obama's plan is to partner with the Pakistani government to defeat -- for good -- the Taliban infiltration in that threatened nation. To achieve this, the president needs to convince Pakistani leaders that it is in their interest to also crush Afghanistan's Taliban, who are hiding in Pakistan border regions near Afghanistan.
It is important to note that parts two and three of Obama's Afghanistan surge cannot be successful if part one, the military surge, is not implemented. With 30,000 more troops, and perhaps more from NATO, there will be about 130,000 troops in Afghanistan. That provides the forces Gen. Stanley McChrystal believes he needs to defeat the radical Islamic threat there.
Obama's critics on the left and the right will predictably snipe at the president's plan. They should stop sniping. The surge is under way. Brave men and women are fighting at great risk to keep us safe. Our prayers go to the troops and their families as well as the Afghan and Pakistani people.
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