Cheney, a Bush critic and now a rabid Obama critic, accused Obama of dithering on Afghanistan:

“The White House must stop dithering while America’s armed forces are in danger,’’ Cheney told the conservative Center for Security Policy. “It’s time for President Obama to do what it takes to win a war he has repeatedly and rightly called a war of necessity… Make no mistake. Signals of indecision out of Washington hurt our allies and embolden our adversaries,’’ Cheney added.

WH Press Sec Gibbs answers to the dithering gibe:

“What Vice President Cheney calls dithering, President Obama calls his solemn responsibility to the men and women in uniform and to the American public. I think we’ve all seen what happens when somebody doesn’t take that responsibility seriously,’’ Gibbs said during his daily briefing.

Gibbs also blamed the Bush-Cheney team for allowing the situation to worsen in Afghanistan, asserting that the 21,000-troop increase Obama approved in March had been sitting on their desks for months. “I find it interesting that he’s blaming us for something that he didn’t see fit to do over, best I can tell, seven years of a war in Afghanistan,’’ Gibbs said.

Obama has thus far refused to make the quick decisions that the Bush administration had made on entering into wars and their execution.  Clearly, Afghanistan is a different kind of war.  To echo Steve Coll, it’s a “complicated  war.”  Pakistan grew the Taliban from a little seed organization into the de facto rulers of most of Afghanistan.  They helped the Taliban even as the Americans entered Afghanistan in October 2001.  There is evidence that Pakistan is even helping the Taliban now, by hiding their leaders and refusing to break their connection with them.  Afghanistan has been in a state of civil war since 1978, with first the Soviets in 1979, and now the Americans in 2001 invading (each wanted to “liberate” the country).  Unlike Iraq, nobody questioned Americans going into Afghanistan, as the Taliban harbored al Qaeda.  America overthrew the Taliban, who now are coming back and winning ground in a war the current US commander in Afghanistan is saying we are losing.  He asks for more troops.  At this point, America is closing in on the Soviet’s dilemma: an intractable civil war replete with foreign fighters backed by Pakistan, and, more importantly, native Afghans trying to push them out.  It is far from clear whether Pakistan really wants to help the Americans, and until some strategy is in place for Pakistan, Afghanistan will be lost.  It is clear that under the Bush administration the situation in Afghanistan deteriorated and they had not taken the right tack with regard to Pakistan, the key to winning the Afghanistan war.  This was not Obama’s fault, and now it is Obama’s responsibility to correct.

Obama must decide whether  to escalate the Afghanistan war or make a new strategy.  There is urgency, but Cheney is wrong to rush the situation.  Any decision Obama makes will lead to more U.S. soldier deaths, and it is not a decision to rush.  We can easily accuse the Bush administration, and Dick Cheney, of “dithering” on Afghanistan when they took office, knowing that the Taliban was harboring al Qaeda and refusing, as did their predecessors in Bush I and Clinton, to formulate a coherent Afghan policy until Setpember 11, 2001.  Cheney pushed for war in two countries and thought we could stabilize both, simultaneously.  They were wrong about Afghanistan, and about Pakistan, and now Obama must make sure he does not make similar mistakes.

Cheney has a right to publicly state his opinions.  Cheney argues that his role is as an Obama critic.  As a former VP that dominated the news pages for seven and a half years, Cheney knows that whatever he says publicly will be heard ’round the world.   Considering this, for Cheney to call careful deliberation “dithering” is dangerous.  It emboldens the Taliban, giving them nice, helpful quotes to put on their mud-hut walls and say to the Afghan farmers they control through fear and intimidation that Obama is indecisive and weak.  It lowers the morale of the troops in harm’s way in Afghanistan.  It equates strategic thinking with weakness, a perspective that rushed us into the Iraq war, created a civil-liberties-free zone in Guantanamo Bay that became reviled around the world, and let to the worst excesses of post-9/11 domestic and foreign policies.  By uttering these irresponsible words, Cheney is diddling the American public from his soft-post as leader of the anti-Obama mob.

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