Pres. Barack Obama’s speech today was the first step toward making the Afghan war politically his own. He couched his commitment to the war accordingly, minimizing it as much as he could manage while remaining consistent with the central thrust of his speech, which was dedicated to explaining why we need to devote more resources to the fight. About this necessity, the president is exactly right, and on this day, at least, his much-vaunted centrism, which has never shown up in the domestic arena, was on display. “We are in Afghanistan,” Obama said, “to confront a common enemy that threatens the United States, our friends and our allies, and the people of Afghanistan and Pakistan, who have suffered the most at the hands of violent extremists.” Exactly so. To defeat this enemy, Obama argued, we need the “comprehensive” approach of a full-scale counter-insurgency — encompassing security, governance, and economics — rather the narrow counter-terrorism strategy some of his advisers favored. That minimalist strategy would have risked making all of Afghanistan into the equivalent of the tribal areas of Pakistan, where al-Qaeda operatives go unmolested except by the occasional Predator strike. Obama explained that he is ordering another 17,000 combat troops to Afghanistan to take the fight to the Taliban in the east and the south of the country. Those are the areas where we haven’t had enough troops to control an insurgency that thrives in ungoverned, unpatrolled spaces. He noted that he is sending another brigade of troops to aid in the training of the Afghan army, which we want, ultimately, to take up the bulk of the fight. He outlined the imperative of improving an Afghan government plagued by corruption and incompetence — lest popular discontent with it feed the ranks of the insurgency — and the need for more U.S. civilians on the ground to aid in that effort. The Afghan war has always been under-resourced, in terms of U.S. troops and everything else, and Obama has begun to change that. The situation in Afghanistan cannot be considered in isolation from Pakistan, where the government tolerates extremist safe-havens on its borders. Obama said, “After years of mixed results, we will not, and cannot, provide a blank check” to Pakistan. It’s the right sentiment; acting on it while dealing with a weak and conflicted Pakistani government will be devilishly difficult. Obama called for another $1.5 billion in annual civilian aid to Pakistan, but the country has demonstrated a formidable ability to vacuum up our dollars without abandoning the double-game it plays with us. What is disturbing about Obama’s position is the hint of hedging. Commanding general David McKiernan had asked for more troops. Obama approved only part of his request, preferring to wait and make a call on the balance later. But with a tough summer of fighting ahead, it will get politically harder, not easier, to deploy more troops. Obama declined to explicitly endorse an expensive doubling of Afghan security forces today, as some in his administration have advocated, saying only further “increases in Afghan forces may very well be necessary.” And he talked of benchmarks for progress in the war, a politically seductive notion that proved useless at best — and often counter-productive — in the Iraq war. In short, today was a start. But much will depend on how Obama performs later, when the Left is more restive and the politics of the war more parlous.