Obama's famous 2002 speech in Chicago at an anti-war rally, outlined his opposition to the coming Iraq war invasion:

"...But I also know that Saddam poses no imminent and direct threat to the United States, or to his neighbors, that the Iraqi economy is in shambles, that the Iraqi military a fraction of its former strength, and that in concert with the international community he can be contained until, in the way of all petty dictators, he falls away into the dustbin of history."

Obama voiced his opposition to the Iraq war, but he also made an effort to explain a broader policy about war in general:

"What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war."

This brings us to Afghanistan. President Barack Obama is carrying out a campaign pledge that the United States must be willing to strike al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan.

Obama is currently continuing Bush's policy to use American airpower to drop bombs inside Pakistan's northern provinces. Many anti-war sites were quick to pick up on this:

"A pair of missile strikes from American drones into Pakistan’s North and South Waziristan Agencies have killed at least 20 people, and injured an unknown number of others. This marks the first cross-border attack by US forces since President Obama took office on Tuesday."

Obama has also vowed to escalate the number of American troops in Afghanistan. In his Berlin Speech last year Obama said:

"There's starting to be a growing consensus that it's time for us to withdraw some of our combat troops out of Iraq, deploy them here in Afghanistan ... Now is the time for us to do it."

So this is what the nation is in for over the next 8 years: a continued and escalating military presence in Afghanistan, with frequent airstrikes inside Pakistan. Obama's plan is necessary and doable. I will addres why, by answering the claims of why we should not.

First the cons - Is this doable?

Soviet Russia had a long and bloody conflict in Afghanistan in the 1980s and it ended in failure, what makes us think we will do any better?

The situation today in Afghanistan is different then the one Russia had in the 1980s. For one, the resistance to the United States is not currently being armed with the most sophisticated weapons available by the CIA. The biggest obstacle Russia encountered was state-of-the-art surface to air missiles the resistance had. These were provided via Operation Cyclone, and the easy to use shoulder-fired stinger missiles effectively removed the advantage Russian air-superiority had.

There will not be a similar Operation Cyclone this time. It did not happen in Iraq, or the recent wars in Lebannon and Gaza, nor has it happened in Afghanistan. The current resistance to the West's military involvement in the world has been confined to, though deadly, weapons that our air-power is virtually immune to. Helicopters have been shot down in Iraq with anti-personnel rocket propelled grenades, but the casualties the Russians experienced in Afghanistan at the hands of these state-of-the-art anti-aircraft missiles were much much higher.

Iraq was a failure, and the weapons the Taliban have are similar to the weapons the Iraqi resistance have. What makes us think we will do any better in Afghanistan?

Iraq is different from Afghanistan because the Iraqi people were fighting for their country. It is an easy rallying cry to follow to get the invaders out of a country. However Obama is luckier in Afghanistan then Bush was in Iraq because the Taliban are not fighting for their country. The Taliban are a paramilitary organization based in Pakistan.

This was obvious when in the first days of the Afghanistan war, the Taliban fled Afghanistan to their southern neighbor Pakistan. And every spring when the Taliban return to Afghanistan to launch attacks, where do they come from? The Taliban cross the border from Pakistan into Afghanistan.

This enemy will be easier to defeat then the one we faced in Iraq. The resistance in Iraq did not leave the country, then regroup and cross back over the border to fight us, despite what Donald Rumsfeld claimed. The resistance in Iraq were Iraqies, and they were not fighting some holy war, they were fighting for their home towns and cities. The Taliban are fighting to conquer land, not to reclaim some hereditary land, their ancestors lived in for ages.

There has been fighting in Afghanistan forever, there will never be peace. What makes us think we will have peace in Afghanistan this time?

This is again not true. What we are fighting in Afghanistan are the Taliban, and the Taliban are not some age old adversary. They are a new organization, starting off as separate paramilitary organizations in Pakistan funded by the West in their fight against Russia, and later combining under the name Taliban in 1996 to run the government of Afghanistan. So what we are basically fighting is a group that 14 years ago did not exist.

The Taliban are a group supported by the Pashtuns, and the Pashtuns are from a region that contains parts of southern Afghanistan and northern Pakistan, so it will be impossible to stop Afghan support for the Taliban.

Again, if this was the case why is the Taliban an organization that is only 14 years old?

So far I have only discussed why defeating the Taliban is possible. There is still the question of "Why should we do it?" Everyone knows innocent people are going to die, civilians, women and children.

Obama's famous 2002 speech in Chicago at an anti-war rally, outlined why he believed some wars are necessary:

"The Civil War was one of the bloodiest in history, and yet it was only through the crucible of the sword, the sacrifice of multitudes, that we could begin to perfect this union, and drive the scourge of slavery from our soil."

It would have saved alot of lives if the south willingly ended their oppression of blacks in this country, but unfortunately they were unwilling to do so. But Afghanistan is not the United States. And this brings us to the final claim against Obama's call to defeat the Taliban:

We know the Taliban are mean, and oppress women's rights, and everything else, but why do we have to go halfway around the world to solve a problem when we have so many at home?

The answer has alot to do with why we elected Obama in the first place. We want Obama to solve all the problems Bush created. However Obama should not limit himself to just Bush. Or even both Bushes. What Obama will do in Afghanistan is solve the problem Ronald Reagan created when he funded the first holy warriors in the 1980s who would eventually become the modern day Taliban. We all saw the blowback during the September 11th 2001 attacks, and like so may Republican mistakes in the past, it is now Barack Obama's task to fix them.