On May 6, after meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and Pakistan''s President Asif Ali Zardari at the White House, President Obama rolled out his favorite phrase, the one that usually precedes a line in the sand: "Let me be clear," Obama announced. "The United States has made a lasting commitment to defeat al-Qaeda, but also to support the democratically elected sovereign governments of both Pakistan and Afghanistan. That commitment will not waver. And that support will be sustained."

If the clarity of Obama''s rhetoric on Afghanistan strikes you as familiarly Bushian, it''s possible you''re a congressional Democrat. Obama has already committed 21,000 more troops to Afghanistan - a decision he called the toughest he''s made in the Oval Office - only to see violence there increase. Fifty-one troops died in August, the bloodiest month since the U.S. invasion eight years ago. Public support for the war has plummeted and the Afghan presidential elections could not have gone worse: it will take months for the U.N. to unstuff the ballot boxes and figure out if Karzai won outright or must defend himself in a runoff.