Democrats Dither on Afghanistan Troop Surge

From the New York Times, "Decision on Afghan Troops May Wait":

The White House signaled Sunday that President Obama would postpone any decision on sending more troops to Afghanistan until the disputed election there had been settled and resulted in a government that could work with the United States.

As an audit of Afghanistan’s Aug. 20 election ground toward a conclusion, American officials pressed President Hamid Karzai to accept a runoff vote or share power with his main rival, Abdullah Abdullah, a former foreign minister. Although Mr. Karzai’s support appeared likely to fall below 50 percent in the final count, together he and Mr. Abdullah received 70 percent, in theory enough to forge a unity government with national credibility.

The question at the heart of the matter, said President Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, is not “how many troops you send, but do you have a credible Afghan partner for this process that can provide the security and the type of services that the Afghan people need?” He appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

He echoed the thoughts of Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, a top Obama ally and the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said in a separate interview from Kabul, “I don’t see how President Obama can make a decision about the committing of our additional forces, or even the further fulfillment of our mission that’s here today, without an adequate government in place.” His interview was broadcast on “Face the Nation.”

“It would be irresponsible,” Mr. Emanuel told CNN. Then he continued, paraphrasing the senator, that it would be reckless to decide on the troop level without first doing “a thorough analysis of whether, in fact, there’s an Afghan partner ready to fill that space that U.S. troops would create and become a true partner in governing.”

The signals come as Republican critics already are complaining that the president is taking too long to decide whether to send the additional 40,000 troops requested by his commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. They argue that Mr. Obama has left the impression of indecisiveness that has only emboldened the Taliban, making the task of the 68,000 American troops already there that much harder.

But see Jules Crittenden, "Last-Man-Mistake-Death Opportunity Knocks":

Well, sometimes not making a decision is a decision. Not making a choice when you really have no choice is pretty much a forfeit, though. Imagine where we’d be in Iraq today if George Bush had dithered like this, maybe we will, maybe we won’t, while the Iraqi government went through its extended birth pains. Pretty much not in Iraq, I’d guess, but not in a good way, fighting a wretched rearguard action on the way out as Iran and al-Qaeda fought over the bloody leavings of the great Iraqi genocide of 2008. With every last one of our allies looking on, doing the mental calculus on which way to go now that the United States has shown itself to be utterly gutless and unreliable.

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.

Related: See my essay today at FrontPage Magazine, "When Defeat is the Answer."