What was missing from Obama's Afghanistan speech tonight? How about "victory" and "win"?

Within the hour three accurate assesssments appeared online:

Sarah Palin responds to Obama's speech via Facebook:

Three months ago, I joined a number of Americans in urging President Obama to provide the resources necessary to achieve our goals in Afghanistan. Tonight, I am glad he mostly heeded that advice.

At long last, President Obama decided to give his military commanders much of what they need to accomplish their mission in Afghanistan. In the end, he decided to endorse a “surge” for Afghanistan, applying the counterinsurgency principles of “clear, hold and build” that worked so well in Iraq. Given that he opposed the surge in Iraq, it is even more welcome that he now supports a surge in Afghanistan.

This approach means, as Senator John McCain has noted, that “We now have an opportunity to build a bipartisan consensus in support of a vital national security priority: defeating Al-Qaeda and its violent extremist allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and ensuring that these countries never again serve as bases for terrorist attacks against America and our allies.”

We should be clear, however, that fewer troops mean assuming more risk. Talk of an exit date also risks sending the wrong message. We should be in Afghanistan to win, not to set a timetable for withdrawal that signals a lack of resolve to our friends, and lets our enemies believe they can wait us out. As long as we’re in to win, and as long as troop level decisions are based on conditions on the ground and the advice of our military commanders, I support President Obama’s decision.

Professor Victor Davis Hanson of the Hoover Institution weighed in:

That was such a strange speech. Deploring partisanship while serially trashing Bush at each new talking point. Sending more troops, but talking more about when they will come home rather than what they will do to the enemy. There was nothing much new in the speech, yet apparently it took the president months to decide whether even to give it.

Ostensibly the talk was to be on Afghanistan; instead, the second half mostly consisted of the usual hope-and-change platitudes.

Peter Brookes stated the obvious:

Despite the rhetorical flourishes, it's pretty clear President Obama has one foot out the door on Afghanistan. His heart just isn't in it. Unfortunately, I won't be the only one to notice that, either here — or overseas.

He's basically given our troop plus-up as little as a year — by the time they get there in the summer of 2010 - before he starts to drawdown U.S. forces in mid-2011.

Not only will an artificial timetable for withdrawal encourage the Taliban and al-Qaeda, but does President Obama really expect the already-skittish allies and coalition partners to pony up more forces under those conditions? (He's at least 10,000 troops short for General McChrystal's baseline strategy.)

This is no way to win a war.

The emphasis should not be on Afghanistan taking up its own defense. The main purpose to be in Afghanistan (and Pakistan) is to protect this country and its citizens from those who Obama wrongly calls "extremists who have distorted and defiled Islam, one of the world's great religions, to justify the slaughter of innocents." On 9/11 and on many occasions in many centuries "extremists" were doing what the Koran and Mohammed command.