i nheriting a b ad h and 329course (leaving open whether to alter the military approach within the
existing force commitment), or escalate American involvement. Th e
options actually available in a particular war, though, may be more
limited, as was the case in Afghanistan. Withdrawal had been removed
from the table by Obama himself during his campaign: he had stressed
that Afghanistan, not Iraq, was the war on which the United States
should focus because al-Qaeda remained directly active in the Afghanistan-
Pakistan region. He had gone so far as to suggest that he would con-
sider sending additional troops to Afghanistan. (Here he had tied his
hands to a greater degree than had Nixon when he ran for president in
1968.) At the other extreme, he could not undertake a major escalation
of the American war effort for the same reasons Bush could not in
Iraq—too few available troops, due to an overstretched military, and
the political obstacles to a large-scale expansion of the U.S. armed
forces. Effectively, then, Obama only had room in the middle to
maneuver. Because Obama had not committed himself to any par-
ticular operational approach to fi ghting the war, he might embrace one
that diff ered from his predecessor’s—in this case, an implicit repudi-
ation of the Bush-Rumsfeld way. A new president has that luxury when
his predecessor has led the war to a stalemate.
Most important, Obama would be given some additional time, the
precious commodity without which presidents can do little to shape the
outcome of a confl ict. Th e American people showed little enthusiasm
for the Afghanistan conflict, but it also attracted limited domestic
attention because the United States was beset by the massive fi nancial
collapse that began in fall 2008. If public patience for Bush’s wars was
exhausted, Obama could count on a breathing space, both to fi gure out
how better to achieve the goals he defi ned and to execute any new pol-
icies he chose. Democrats in Congress, moreover, would give their party
leader longer to find a way out of the stalemate before renewing
demands for prompt withdrawal.
Just the same, as Obama and his advisors understood, they could not
start from scratch—the Afghanistan War had been going on since late
2001 and Americans would not grant even a new president an indefi nite
extension to bring it to a conclusion. Th e ticking political clock meant
the president needed to defi ne an approach that would yield positive
results soon, and certainly before he faced reelection.