GATES LAYS IT ON THE LINE - AT 6:51 A.M. ET:  Adding to the president's woes is Afghanistan, which he declared during his campaign to be the good war.  It is now Obama's war, and his own secretary of defense isn't all that cheery about the way things are going:

American public support for the Afghan war will dissipate in less than a year unless the Obama administration achieves "a perceptible shift in momentum," Defense Secretary Robert Gates said in an interview.

Mr. Gates said the momentum in Afghanistan is with the Taliban, who are inflicting heavy U.S. casualties and hold de facto control of swaths of the country.

The defense chief has been moving aggressively to salvage the war in Afghanistan, signing off on the deployments of 21,000 American military personnel and recently taking the unprecedented step of firing the four-star general who commanded all U.S. forces there. Mr. Gates, speaking in his cabin on an Air Force plane, said the administration is rapidly running out of time to turn around the war.

COMMENT:  Something else to make our day.  I have to admire Gates's straight talk on this (assuming he's accurate).  I have to add, though, that our progress in Afghanistan will be affected by how our enemies there see the new administration.  If they think we'll fade out, they'll persist, with an expectation of victory.  If they see we'll stand firm, we might see the kind of progress we saw in Iraq.  It's all very iffy, and I claim no expertise on that particular conflict. 

Crunches everywhere are coming.

May 26, 2009