President Obama has already given the initial orders to put his new Afghanistan war strategy into effect and he has begun informing national and international leaders what that strategy will entail. The big speech tomorrow night from the US Military Academy at West Point will let the rest of us in on the plan but there are already loud complaints from both sides of the ideological aisle since the president seems to be playing politics with foreign policy and national security decisions.

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The new strategy will reportedly include additional troop deployments, though probably less than the 40,000 additional troops requested by Mr. Obama's hand-picked commander General Stanley McChrystal. Any increased involvement in Afghanistan is bound to anger the president's far-left base and most Congressional Democrats. Senator Carl Levin (D-Michigan), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, recently said, "The key here is an Afghan surge, not an American surge. We cannot, by ourselves, win (the) war." (source) Democrats also claim to be concerned about the financial cost of the new strategy. Ironic since at the same time they continue to try to push through over a trillion dollars of wasteful spending on so-called health care reform.

Meanwhile on the right, Republicans are concerned by indications that a timetable for withdrawal would be included in the new strategy thereby signaling to our enemies that they need merely wait until a certain date when American forces will leave Afghanistan and they can remake that country into the terrorist haven it once was.

This disjointed approach of trying to pacify all sides with half-hearted efforts may work in politics but it's no way to win a war (and yes, I realize it's a big assumption to think Mr. Obama is even interested in winning this war).

We will of course have to wait until tomorrow night to find out exactly what President Obama's new strategy will be and just how strong the opposition might be on both sides. But based on his track record as Commander-in-Chief so far, it's a pretty safe bet his decisions will have been made based on his own political interests, not what's best for the country.