Editorial: More means less

President Obama's decision to send more soldiers to Afghanistan amounts to the best of several risky options.

Obama also said he would begin drawing down U.S. troops by July 2011, which is what war-weary Americans have been waiting to hear. They must understand, however, that a lot has to happen to reach that point, and there will be many obstacles along the way.

Speaking last night at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., Obama laid out a plan to add about 30,000 troops beginning this winter. Combined with an additional 22,000 troops that the president authorized earlier this year, it will bring the total U.S. forces in Afghanistan to more than 100,000 by the end of May.

With requested forces from NATO allies, this "surge" would nearly meet the 40,000 troops requested last summer by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the coalition commander in Afghanistan.

Obama said the troop increase will "help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans . . . it will be clear to the Afghan government - and, more importantly, to the Afghan people - that they will ultimately be responsible for their own country."

By announcing an exit date, Obama made clear he does intend to disengage from this costly, complicated war, now in its eighth year. He acknowledged that Americans increasingly are questioning whether this fight is worth the cost, and that they do not want an open-ended commitment.

If the effort is to succeed, it must be combined with targeted economic and political aid to regional governors who are more or less independent of the corrupt central government of President Hamid Karzai.

Obama campaigned last year on the promise of withdrawing troops from Iraq and instead focusing the war on terror in Afghanistan, original haven of the 9/11 plotters. The president is pulling U.S. forces out of Iraq gradually, but the options confronting him in Afghanistan all carry heavy risks.

Had the president decided against sending more troops, as McChrystal had requested, it would have signaled to enemy Taliban forces and to neighboring Pakistan that the United States was ready to abandon Afghanistan.

That would light a fire under the Taliban, under whose rule Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda launched attacks against the West with impunity.

It also would have had serious repercussions with our ally Pakistan, home to a nuclear arsenal and a network of Islamic extremists who would love to get their hands on those weapons.

Vice President Biden and others had earlier advanced the option of fighting the Taliban and al-Qaeda primarily with drone aircraft and special forces. But without ground troops in support, such an effort could lack the intelligence network and infrastructure that makes it most effective.

So Obama settled on sending more troops, which undoubtedly will result in more casualties and a financial cost of roughly $1 billion for each additional 1,000 soldiers sent to that theater.

The president was criticized for taking several months to reach the strategy that he finally announced last night. But the care that Obama took in reaching his decision made sense, given what was at stake. He could not in good conscious simply send more troops without also considering a plan for their withdrawal.

Nor could he ignore the American public's growing impatience with Karzai, especially after his tainted election earlier this year. Charges of corruption in the Karzai government go as far up as his brother, who is said to be in the opium poppy trade.

This surge of U.S. troops, and the accelerated timetable for their deployment, should improve the situation militarily and give more time to Karzai to stem corruption and to the Afghan army to grow and train. But it won't change the fact that most Americans want out of this war soon.

They will buy Obama's new strategy only so long as they're convinced that it in the long run it will shorten the time it will take for our troops to come home.