A few hours into his journey to the two key lands occupied by American troops, Barack Obama is feeling the love. Indeed, it seems as if leaders in both Iraq and Afghanistan are looking for some change they can believe in. As I reported for The Media Consortium , on the eve of Obama's senatorial fact-finding mission to Afghanistan and Iraq, the Afghan ambassador to the U.S. issued a plea for more U.S. troops in his country. Ambassador Said Jawad 's request, delivered with a sense of urgency in a Washington, D.C., forum, vindicated Obama's long-held contention that the U.S. invasion of Iraq served only to divert attention and resources from the true front lines in the fight against terrorism, which the Democratic presidential candidate locates in Afghanistan. Last week, Obama published an op-ed in the New York Times advocating the redeployment of troops from Iraq to Afghanistan. The current capacity of U.S. forces is inadequate, Jawad asserted, noting the recent attack by the Taliban on a U.S. Army outpost that left nine Americans dead. As for our European allies, Jawad said, "The NATO forces are not fighting as hard as they should." The concern of most Afghans, Jawad said, was not that the U.S. was on their land, but whether the U.S. would stay long enough for the nation to build institutions capable of serving and protecting the people. Implicit in his statement was the belief of many Afghans that the U.S. will abandon their nati ...
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