THE SPEECH - AT 8:36 A.M. ET:  We are now about 12 hours away from President Obama's speech on Afghanistan, surely a defining moment for his administration.

The key question is no longer whether he'll send more troops to the war zone.  He will.  The key question is the overall tone of the speech.  Will there be a will to win?  A real strategy?  Or is the president simply pursuing a temporary holding action to avoid being accused, before the 2012 election, of "losing" Afghanistan?

Already there are worries.  The White House, in press statements, is emphasizing, not the need to win in Afghanistan, however that's defined, but how we get out.  That is, of course, the wrong message to send to the enemy.

And how will Mr. Obama describe that enemy?  Will he finally succumb to the truth and describe it as Islamic and extremist, and put those words together?  Or will he persist in the myth that there is nothing to justify any association between Islam and violence? 

Will Obama blame Bush for our plight, as he has done so many times?  Or will he take command?

Some readers have suggested that this speech is all a cynical exercise.  They argue the possibility that Mr. Obama knows that the left-wing Democrats in Congress will block funding for the war, replaying the Vietnam playbook, and that he'll get out of the problem that way, all the while claiming that he did what he could, but that Congress tied his hands.  While there's a very real chance that Congress will try to block funding, or impose new and unpopular taxes to pay for the war, I doubt if that is figuring in the president's announcement.  If Congress succeeded in blocking funding, going against Barack Obama, the president would, after all, look like a weak fool.  I doubt if he plans on that.

Another intriguing question:  Will Obama pull a Truman?  President Truman realized he had a problem with the left wing of the Democratic Party, and essentially read it out of the party in 1948.  Its leader, Henry Wallace, then ran against him on the Progressive ticket, the Progressive Party being a front for the old red groups.  At some point Mr. Obama must realize that the left is doing him far more harm than good, and that moving to the center is necessary for his own survival.  How soon, though, will he realize it?

Frankly, I don't think he has the spine that Harry Truman had. 

So we wait.  Urgent Agenda will be blogging live through the speech.  As always, we hope that the president makes a wise decision for the nation.  And, as always, we don't expect all that much.

December 1,  2009