Real men make tough decisions.

Always there is the illusion of the easy path. Always there is the illusion, which gripped Donald Rumsfeld and now grips many Democrats, that you can fight a counterinsurgency war with a light footprint, with cruise missiles, with special forces operations and unmanned drones. Always there is the illusion, deep in the bones of the Pentagon’s Old Guard, that you can fight a force like the Taliban by keeping your troops mostly in bases, and then sending them out in well-armored convoys to kill bad guys.

…

We have tried to fight the Afghan war the easy way, and it hasn’t worked. Switching now to the McChrystal strategy is a difficult choice, and President Obama is right to take his time. But Obama was also right a few months ago when he declared, ‘This will not be quick, nor easy. But we must never forget: This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. … This is fundamental to the defense of our people.’

—David Brooks, “The Afghan Imperative,” New York Times, Sept. 24, 2009 (available at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25brooks.html), via Glenn Greenwald, “David Brooks: Our Nation’s Premier Expert Warrior,” Salon, Sept. 25, 2009 (available at http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/09/25/brooks/index.html).