A Band-Aid on Bush's War

I think there's something getting repeatedly lost in the hand-wringing and keyword-tallying going on in preparation for tonight's speech by President Obama. While I'm sure we'll hear a great deal this evening about "benchmarks," and victory and the Taliban, I suspect we'll hear very little about the War on Terrorism. There are some fundamental questions that have not been answered by escalation proponents, and I doubt we'll get those answers tonight when the President takes to the podium at West Point.

Specifically, how is allocating 100,000 troops to Afghanistan--at a roughly estimated cost of $1 million per troop per year, if not more--a justifiable strategy for isolating and killing an al-Qaeda leadership believed to be weak and on the wane in the region. How does escalation in Afghanistan defeat al-Qaeda in Yemen, or the Maghreb?

And in his failure to address broader questions about America's long war on terrorism, President Obama has simply opted for the politically safer option of applying bandages to President Bush's Afghan war strategy. This may assuage the President's critics, but it does little to address greater concerns about terrorism and American security.

Rather than a departing from the Bush doctrine, Obama has simply wed himself to it--or worse--clings to it for dear life.

I'll be 'tweeting' (yes, that's apparently a verb) the speech once it begins, please feel free to follow along.

(AP Photos)