Different dance; same floor.

The Afghan tap dance continues apace. Only now the tempo has eased; the wild clatter of taps on the dance floor is muted as the dance becomes a soft shoe and the clatter slows to a gentle scraping of taps being dragged across the same goddamn floor.

The headline looked great: “Official: Obama rejects war options.” Anyone scanning it would be forgiven for thinking that no more troops are heading for Afghanistan.

Not so fast, Charlie. Read the story.

What Obama is looking for is a tweak. He’s “pushing instead for revisions to clarify how and when U.S. troops would turn over responsibility to the Afghan government.” The number of additional troops needed for this “revised” policy is 30,000. However, only half of them would be combat troops. The rest would be trainers who would only see combat when they led their charges into battle.

It’s Vietnam redux when our goal was to train the Vietnamese army to take over the fighting. Of course, they never did and we just had to send in more troops to maintain our credibility. Reports indicate that the Afghan army is worse than the Vietnamese. So, it’s only a matter of time before Obama will have to send in even more troops to maintain our credibility. After all, what's a president to do?

Oh well. At least the headline looked good.