President Obama has ordered sufficient reinforcements to Afghanistan to execute a war strategy that can succeed. We applaud this decision. And we urge everyone to rally round the effort to defeat our enemies and accomplish objectives vital to America’s national security.Obama’s decision, and the speech in which it was announced, were not flawless. The president should have met his commander’s full request for forces. He should not have announced a deadline for the start of the withdrawal of U.S. forces. He should have committed to a specific and significant increase in the size of the Afghan National Security Forces. He should also have explained more clearly the relationship between defeating the Taliban and defeating al Qaeda, the significance of such a victory, and the reasons his Afghan strategy can succeed. The secretaries of defense and state, as well as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, made those arguments far more compellingly in subsequent congressional testimony than the president did at West Point.
