PRUDEN: Obama dithers and dithers - Washington Times

PRUDEN: Obama dithers and dithers - Washington Times: "Only a wreck on the highway is more exciting than watching a president argue with himself. Not even the gruesome sight of presidential gore can overcome the instinct to stare at the gloomy and ponder the morbid.

Barack Obama, like the 'progressives' he represents, is proud of a mind so open that his brains are forever at risk of falling out. He first said the war in Afghanistan was a war the West could not afford to lose. But that was way back when, and he changed his mind. Then he changed it again, and now nobody, maybe not even the president himself, knows what he thinks. This president's resolve, crucial though it is to the nation's security and survival, is always a work in progress.

All presidents are fond of saying the door to the Oval Office is always open, advice is welcome from all, no point of view will be ignored, the opinion of every American is valued, blah, blah, blah. This is happy talk, usually sufficient only as a strategy for dithering and delay. A Praetorian guard can make sure that anyone who takes the happy talk for the real stuff is kept far, far away from a president absorbed in his indecision.

This definitely includes the leader of the soldiers whom the commander in chief put in harm's way in Afghanistan. You might think the president talks frequently with Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of both U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. But if you think that, you don't understand how this president works. Gen. McChrystal's five-page Commander's Summary of what's going on in Afghanistan, prepared for the president, came forcefully to the president's attention with the leak of the document, in which the general warned that 'failure to gain the initiative and reverse momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) - while Afghan security capacity matures - risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.'"