Obama makes right choice on Afghanistan

PASADENA--Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is a tyrant, the Taliban is active throughout the country and neighboring Pakistan and Iran are time bombs waiting to go off. The easy choice for President Obama would have been to declare victory and begin a strategic retreat. He made the right choice to expand the U.S. presence but not for reasons espoused by hawks in Congress.

The President took office under the most challenging conditions of any president since Truman took the helm from Roosevelt. His predecessor did more to destroy our nation in the geo-political and economic spheres than any combination of external threats have ever been able to accomplish. It is this writer's opinion that certain Bush Administration officials violated federal laws and the U.S. Constitution and should be prosecuted for behavior that borders on treasonous.

Obama would have preferred not to take office with the U.S. financial system in collapse, a half-baked bailout scheme already in motion and two foreign conflicts with only marginal strategic significance to our national security. Obama used classic Keynesian economic theory to successfully prop up the obliterated financial markets and key industries, thereby saving us from social collapse and perhaps even a Constitutional crisis. Despite the immense hurdles he faced in Iraq, he continued General Petraeus' successful effort to pacify the Sunni hardliners and empower the Shia majority.

In Afghanistan, he must do what is necessary to stabilize the country. The end result will not be a Western-style liberal democracy. But considering the history of the fledging nation-state, did the neo-conservatives really believe that could have occurred under even the best of circumstances? I think not. Instead, we will follow a modified version of Vice President Biden's plan which will require us to create a stable environment in the cities and major transportation corridors. That will require more soldiers on the ground. We will ramp us training of Afghan troops and hopefully clean some of the corruption out of the Karzai government. In unsecured areas, we will use special forces and drone missiles to keep the Taliban from regrouping in large numbers. This will take time but will ultimately allow us to create a fairly stable situation on the ground and draw down within a few years.

Obama did not create the worst domestic and foreign disasters of our nation's recent history. He just cleaned them up.