As the review ground on, the public pressure on Obama shifted from making the case for more troops to something more primal, a criticism that would persist for seven years: He was, Washington concluded, dithering. Nothing bothered Obama more than one column by David Brooks in The New York Times. Brooks, a temperamentally moderate guy, announced that he had spoken to the nation’s “smartest military experts,” people “who follow the war for a living, who spend their days in military circles both here and in Afghanistan.” These people, according to Brooks, “are not worried about his policy
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