It seems clear now that President Barack Obama wasn't just dithering all those weeks when it appeared he couldn't make up his mind about whether to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan.
Instead, he was using the time to pressure Afghan President Hamid Karzai to get on board with the U.N.-backed International Complaints Commission's allegations of massive fraud in the country's recent presidential elections and to acknowledge there was no way the U.S. could do business with an Afghan government seen as corrupt and lacking legitimacy in the eyes of its own people.
On Monday, Mr. Karzai finally faced up to that reality and agreed to a second round of voting - a run-off against his closest competitor, former foreign minister Abdullah Abdullah - after the U.N. panel threw out nearly a million fraudulent ballots he had claimed, thus leaving him short of the 50 percent threshold required to avoid a run-off.
But while it's certainly good news that Mr. Karzai has acceded to American and international demands for another round of voting, the U.S. still faces daunting challenges in Afghanistan. With just over two weeks until the run-off scheduled for Nov. 7, it's not at all clear whether the Afghan government and the international community are up to handling the logistics of holding another nationwide election as winter approaches, or whether the results will be seen as any more credible than the first vote.
Meanwhile, President Obama is struggling to shore up domestic support for a war that polls indicate a majority of Americans no longer believe is worth fighting. Compounding his problem is the reluctance of the NATO allies to give more than token support to the effort even if he eventually agrees to send up to 60,000 more U.S. troops, as his top commander there, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, has requested.
The president probably can't afford to put off that decision until after the results of the runoff election are in. The White House is insisting that its strategic review of the war is continuing and that it will announce a decision on troops within the next few weeks. At the same time, it's hard to see how the administration can commit to putting more American soldiers on the battlefield without knowing whether it will have a reliable partner in whatever Afghan government eventually emerges.
