What Would Bush Do?

[Pluck and Grit]

If he wants to prevail in Afghanistan, Barack Obama needs a George W. Bush moment. He’ll have to ignore the polls, brush aside doubters in his own party, and reinforce a failing war effort.

Bush did all that, and more, when he ordered the surge in Iraq in January 2007. He also had to buck his own military brass and almost the entirety of a foreign-policy establishment that considered the feckless recommendations of the Baker-Hamilton commission holy writ. He operated from a position of political weakness so debilitating, Lyndon Johnson might have identified with it in his final days.

Compared with those headwinds, Obama is experiencing a late-summer breeze on Afghanistan.

National Review article