No rabbit inside Obama's hat

Last night, President Obama's speech failed to charm and motivate me. I heard it, trying to find a sound rationale into it, but therein was very little believable substance. I realize that Barack Obama is now between the rock and the hard place and I find that he's gambling his second term on the hope that by July 2011, the situation will have vastly improved in Afghanistan.

I doubt very much that we'll prevail, unless our arm forces either have a secret plan, or become extremely productive. As our former (and terrible) Secretary of Defense Ronald Rumsfeld once said, “we fight with the army we've got” and sometime I wonder if goals are clear enough and the force smart and motivated enough to steer us towards what we want (yeah, what is it exactly that we want?)

The other missing piece to the puzzle is how we're going to pay for that huge additional expense and, once more, it seems that this extra effort will be absorbed by some magical slush fund that we never knew existed. I'm disappointed but not surprised. I was in favor of pulling out once and for all of this god forsaken land, and here we are stuck there for at least another two years. Mr Obama and his general better turn on the heat and deliver a timely withdrawal!