After taking more time to review things than it took the previous administration to actually topple two hostile regimes, President Obama is set to announce that he is going to send an additional 34,000 troops to Afghanistan.
Rumor is that the increase (don't call it a surge!) has an expiration date built in: some time around May/June 2011.
The far left is furious. Apparently, when Obama spent all of 2007 and 2008 talking about Afghanistan being The Necessary War they were either not paying attention or assumed Obama was lying. Neither alternative is very flattering to either party.
The right is not happy with this talk of an expiration date. Why bother to commit to an increase if we announce ahead of time just how long the enemy has to worry about holding on for? "Until you're all dead" seems a lot longer than "One year, two tops" and would tend be a lot more likely to demoralize me.
One other observation: It took Obama twelve months to poke and prod the numbers before finally coming to the same decision that George Bush would have likely made. Does that make him Just Like Bush, Only Slower?
And which side of the political spectrum would that comparison infuriate more?
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