Obama's War Begins

But where does it end?

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 1, 2009, at 11:58 PM ET

The war that President Barack Obama laid out at West Point Tuesday night—its rationale, strategy, tactics, and resources—is different, in ways large and small, from the war that George W. Bush fought (and didn't fight) in Afghanistan.

Obama is sending 30,000 additional U.S. troops (beyond the 21,000 extra he sent in March, more than doubling our commitment overall). He is shifting their approach from strictly shooting and shelling bad guys to protecting the population and building up Afghan forces. And he is declaring a finite limit to our involvement.