Barack Obama is soon to embark upon stormy seas as he contemplates an appropriate military response to the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan due to the Taliban’s resurgence. General McChrystal argues that 40,000 more troops are needed for counterinsurgency so the Taliban doesn’t make inroads into destabilizing a nuclear Pakistan, while Joe Biden uses the same logic to argue the converse; that our attention and pocketbook ought to be focused solely on Pakistan, again, to keep it and it’s nukes stable.

One side of the argument is that a Taliban left to flourish in Afghanistan will grow in strength and cross the border. In league with Al Quaeda (resurgent in Pakistan), as a marriage of convenience in fundamentalism, they'll install just such a government in Pakistan with nuclear arms at the ready. Counter argument is that any mass fighting in Afghanistan will push the fight over the border into Pakistan. Same result. Destabilization. Installation of nuclear fanged fundamentalist regime.

Add to the mix the disputed Afghan election and the possibility of a second round run-off, and the US strategy for Afghanistan becomes cloudier.

The Afghan war is in its ninth year. Comparisons, mostly inappropriate, are made to Vietnam. Where the wars do match up is the way in which administrations that inherit these conflicts are poisoned and eroded. I recall LBJ, attempts at his Great Society thwarted as the robust Texan was consumed by Vietnam, sleepless nights in the situation room, pouring guiltily over casualty reports from every battle half a world away in Southeast Asia.

Barack Obama must bet on what appears to be a no-win situation in Afghanistan. What’s being gambled, with the chips the previous administration ‘gifted’ him with, is the future of his presidency.