FIRM AND CLEAR ON NATIONAL DEFENSE - AT 11:52 A.M. ET:  The Obama administration seems hopelessly confused and directionless on Afghanistan.  (You remember Afghanistan, don't you?  According to our president, at least during the campaign, that's the good war, as opposed to Iraq, the bad war.  Definitions are tentative and are not guaranteed to last.) 

Administration mouthpieces apparently didn't talk to each other before appearing on talk shows:

Top administration officials appear to be reading from different scripts on top Gen. Stanley McChrystal‘s request for more troops, which he hand delivered to Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen on Saturday.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates, in an interview taped Friday on ABC's “This Week With George Stephanopoulos,” said that a decision will be made in “a matter of a few weeks.”

But Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, in a “Face the Nation” interview on CBS, also taped on Friday, seemed to take a different position, saying that “we have to wait” until after the contested presidential election in Afghanistan, “hopefully very soon." But With the harsh Afghan winter -- which would significantly delay any new round of election -- and no resolution in sight, that would likely take months if there’s not a political deal hashed out in the meantime.

National Security Adviser and retired Gen. Jim Jones, in an interview with Bob Woodward published in Sunday's Washington Post, seemed to side with Clinton, saying “I don’t have a deadline in mind.”

COMMENT:  The president has been in office eight months.  He's declared that we must win in Afghanistan, but his indecisiveness now must be a terrible blow to the military that has to fight the war.  Virtually every day this amateurish administration sends a message of weakness and confusion to our enemies.  They will respond accordingly.

September 27, 2009