Print edition: 
None of the options for the war in Afghanistan is good, which is why President Obama risked pleasing no one with his decision to send 30,000 more U.S. troops to the country. Over the weeks he spent conferring with Cabinet members and military leaders, Obama tried to find ways to anticipate and mitigate the criticism. He failed at that.
But the United States cannot afford to fail in Afghanistan.
Obama's serious speech Tuesday night, delivered at West Point but variously directed at the nation and the world, made a reasoned, rational case for why a larger U.S. military presence is necessary. His troop surge and tentative withdrawal frame a plan aimed at reclaiming parts of Afghanistan from the resurgent Taliban and stepping up the country's military and governance, while continuing to target al-Qaida across the border in Pakistan and build a partnership with that nuclear-armed nation.
"The status quo is not sustainable," Obama said. As the surge proceeds, Americans would do well to remember that the stakes in Afghanistan are as great now as they were after the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Of the Democrats finding fault with Obama's strategy for its costs and otherwise, it should be asked: How would it serve U.S. interests to slog along at current troop levels or pull out, ceding Afghanistan to the Taliban and its al-Qaida allies and showing again that Americans can't be counted on to finish what they start?
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates told the Senate Armed Services Committee Wednesday: "Failure in Afghanistan would mean a Taliban takeover of much, if not most, of the country and likely a renewed civil war. Taliban-ruled areas could in short order become, once again, a sanctuary for al-Qaida as well as a staging area for resurgent militant groups on the offensive in Pakistan."
Potentially worse for the United States, a U.S. retreat and a Taliban return to power would be proof throughout the Muslim world of al-Qaida's contention "that violent extremists are on the winning side of history," Gates said.
To the GOP critics, including members of the Kansas congressional delegation, who are griping about the time Obama took to make his decision and even the vague timetable: Where was the urgency on Afghanistan during the years when the party controlled the White House and Congress? And didn't the Bush administration's talk of timelines help fuel the turnaround in the Iraq war, by signaling to Iraqis that the U.S. commitment wasn't open-ended?
With Obama's decision to increase troop levels between now and July 2011, he has ensured one thing — that the United States will be fighting in Afghanistan for a full decade.
That supports the troubling suggestion recently made by Boston University professor Andrew J. Bacevich, a West Point graduate himself, "that permanent war has become the de facto policy of the United States."
