You May Say I May Be Unfit

Deliberation Is A Good Thing When It Comes To Fighting Wars.

Counting The Numbers Of Troops Is Not Going To Define Our Success Here.there Is No Military Success, Ultimately, To Afghanistan. The Afghans Themselves Are Going To Define What Happens Here. And We Have To Convince Ourselves That We Have A Strategy In Place That Empowers Them To Do That And That Is Realistic In What Our Expectations Are From Them And On What Schedule.

When President Obama Entered The White House, The Economy Was In A Free-fall. The Auto Industry: On Its Back. The Banks: Frozen Up. More Than Three Million Americans Had Already Lost Their Jobs. And America's Bravest, Our Men And Women In Uniform, Were Fighting What Would Soon Be The Longest Wars In Our History.

I Think The Most Important Thing For Us To Make Judgments About Is What Can We Really Do? What Can We Achieve?

At Some Point, Deliberation Begins To Look More Like Indecisiveness Which Then Becomes A Way Of Emboldening Our Enemies And Allies And Causing Our Allies To Question Our Resolve. So We Shouldn't Let One Component Of This Determine Our National Security Here Which Depends On Providing An Afghanistan Which Denies A Safe Haven To Terrorists As Well As Stabilizing Pakistan. Those Are Our Two National Security Interests At Stake In Afghanistan.