Barack has gone out on a limb on this one. He has doubled down on the war in Afghanistan- and to give the administration its due, they have blown up a couple of really bad guys- but it’s getting harder. Lotsa casualties.

This creates a circular problem: if many people are like me, we don’t believe that the president means what he says. We don’t believe that he can lead and inspire the troops to fight the “good war.” And we don’t really believe he understands war well enough to lead well. This becomes a huge morale problem, not only for the military, but for the country. My own belief is that the reason GWB invested so much in Iraq was that there were aspects of Iraqi society that we could identify with: a middle class, biblical references, a truly bad guy at the top. Afghanistan is different, worlds away, a literacy rate in the low double digits and an intractable “culture of poverty,” as the new catch phrase has it.

On Special Report tonight, Mort Kondracke said that Obama was completely sincere about “winning” the “good war.” In the biggest fight I’ve ever seen between him and Charles K., Charles said, “He can’t even utter the word ‘victory.’ How can he even understand what that will take if he can’t say the word?”