Time to Act Presidential on Afghanistan

President Obama loves to blame things on George W. Bush, and on Monday he did it again, referring to the “long years of drift in Afghanistan.” He must be trying to “explain away his own, well, yearlong drift on Afghanistan,” writes Charles Krauthammer. In March, Obama solemnly announced a new strategy following what he called a “comprehensive strategy review.” Now, he obviously wants to switch course.

That’s nothing new. “The history of both the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is a considered readjustment of policies that have failed.” In both cases, we tried to use a light footprint, and it failed. This isn’t “drift,” Krauthammer writes in the Washington Post, it’s the result of faulty decision making, most recently Obama’s own. “He is to be commended for reconsidering. But it is time he acted like a president and decided.” (More Afghanistan stories.)