Barack Obama’s trip to Copenhagen to pitch Chicago for the Olympics
would have been a dumb move whatever the outcome. But as it turned out
(an airy dismissal would not be an unfair description), it poses some
questions about his presidency that are way more important than the
proper venue for synchronized swimming. The first, and to my mind most
important, is whether Obama knows who he is.

This business of self-knowledge is no minor issue. It bears greatly
on the single most crucial issue facing this young and untested
president: Afghanistan. Already, we have his choice for Afghanistan
commander, General Stanley A. McChrystal, taking the measure of his
commander in chief and publicly telling him what to do. This
MacArthuresque star turn called for a Trumanesque response, but Obama
offered nothing of the kind. Instead, he used McChrystal as a prop,
adding a bit of four-star gravitas to that silly trip to Copenhagen by
having the general meet with him there.

This is the president we now have: He inspires lots of affection but
not a lot of awe. It is the latter, though, that matters most in
international affairs, where the greatest and most gut-wrenching tests
await Obama. If he remains consistent to his rhetoric of just seven
weeks ago, he will send more troops to Afghanistan and more of them
will die. “This is not a war of choice,” he said. “This is a war of
necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so
again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even
larger safe haven from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more
Americans.”

Obama could have gone further. Not only would the Taliban be
restored, but the insurgency might consume Pakistan. If that happens,
then a nuclear power could become a failed state — Pakistan’s
pretty close to that now — and atomic weapons could fall into the
hands of terrorist organizations. India, just next door and with mighty
antipathy for Muslim terrorism, could well act on its own. The
bloodbath the British tried to limit in 1947 when they partitioned the
subcontinent might well resume — this time with nuclear
weapons.

The stakes in Afghanistan are great. But they are not ours alone.
Russia is nearby. So are China and Iran. So why Americans have to shed
most of the blood for a Taliban-free Afghanistan is just one of the
questions Obama will have to answer. Another is why Americans have to
die for a set of possibilities that seem remote to most people.

America, after all, has little tolerance for loss of life. The
killing of eight American soldiers in Afghanistan was front-page news.
Contrast that with the numbers from Vietnam — 61 dead from a
single battalion in a single 1967 battle. As for the Taliban fighters,
they not only don’t cherish life; they expend it freely in suicide
bombings. It’s difficult to envisage an American suicide bomber.

The war in Afghanistan is eminently more winnable than was Vietnam.
The Taliban is far from universally liked or admired. Still, the war
will require more than a significant commitment of troops and, of
course, money. It will take presidential leadership, a consistent
staying of the course — an implacable confidence that the right
choice has been made despite what can be steep costs. I am thinking now
of Lyndon Johnson spending nights in the Situation Room, a personal
anguish that belied the happy belief of antiwar demonstrators that the
president was a war-mongering ogre.

Foreign-policy realists question whether any effort in Afghanistan
can succeed. Possibly they are right. The interventionists, if I may
call them that, suggest the realists are being unrealistic — that
Afghanistan matters and it matters much more than Iraq or, before that,
Vietnam ever did and that we can prevail. Possibly they are right.

But the ultimate in realism is for the president to gauge himself
and who he is: Does he have the stomach and commitment for what is
likely to continue to be an unpopular war? Will he send additional
troops but hedge by not sending enough — so that the dying will
be in vain? What does he believe, and will he ask Americans to die for
it? Only he knows the answers to these questions. But based on his
zigzagging so far, we have reason to wonder.