Obama isn’t Eight Years in Afghanistan Enough?

The Afghan war was a "forgotten war" until Obama got the presidency. When former president Bush went in to Iraq the public all but forgot about Afghanistan.
Once in office though Obama vowed to allocate the necessary resources to fight in Afghanistan. Immediately, the Pentagon sent more than 30,000 soldiers and is expected to end 2009 with almost 70,000.
This overall strategy is being defined an d will be presented in the next few days. Recently the President has been in talks with his national security team, and with congressional leaders.
The debate is whether to increase the presence, as requested by the commanding Generals on the ground, or whether attention is given to a public that seems increasingly dejected and wants its country out of Iraq rather than to plunge into another mess in Afghanistan.

So far this year there were 239 dead American soldiers, according to figures from iCasualties.org, an independent website which keeps track of the casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq, using official figures obtained from the Pentagon.

This is an exponential growth if you consider that in 2008 155 fell and in 2007 117 were killed.
U.S. casualties represent more than half of the 1446 international coalition military who have died in Afghanistan.
Allegations of fraud in the recent Afghan elections and allegations of corruption against the government of President Hamid Kharzai, plus the fact that last summer cost many American lives (47 dead soldiers in August alone) suggests to many in the United States that this is a war not worth being fought.
As happened in Iraq, many Americans resent the increased deaths of soldiers, which increased to the same extent that Washington has turned its attention to operations in Afghanistan.
"No war is popular. That's a fantasy. The decision must be taken not on what they want the Republicans or Democrats, but what is important for the present and the future of the country,"
A few weeks ago the Washington Post published part of a confidential report by the Pentagon in which the commander of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, requesting increase in the number of soldiers to the risk of losing the war.
This discussion immediately catalyzed filter and also enabled us to gauge the impact on public opinion, which is to which they are now paying more attention to the Democrats.
The controversy surrounding the future of operations in Afghanistan has intensified by the regular participation of a silent and obedient sector: the following general orders on the ground.
After the press report its recommendations to President Gen. McChrystal confirmed his desire for a change of direction in handling the war in an unusual lecture last week at the Institute of Strategic and International Studies in London.
During that conference came to question the plan to increase the bombing of unmanned aircraft that suggests Vice President Joe Biden
Some say that expressions of military represent something inadmissible to the command line and a general need not be the view of these things in public, so that recently led the secretary of defense saying that better to give "best advice to French President but privately ".
Amid the debate on the future of Afghanistan President meets with the paradox that would support a decision to increase the number of troops on the ground would be the Republican opposition.
Notable was the reluctance exhibited at the exit of the Oval Office meeting Tuesday the parliamentary leaders of the ruling party, Senator Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, to offer unqualified support for the president's policies.
Instead, the Republicans who attended had a more sympathetic tone, increasing expectations that President Obama will have to rely on the opposition to Congress to approve resources for the war effort.
The White House is has a difficult choice to make because it must continue a war which it inherited.