Lost amid the intellectual incoherence and straddling in Barack Obama’s op-ed on Iraq have been his bold plans for Afghanistan:

As president, I would pursue a new strategy, and begin by providing at least two additional combat brigades to support our effort in Afghanistan. We need more troops, more helicopters, better intelligence-gathering and more nonmilitary assistance to accomplish the mission there.

Naturally, we can expect a hue and cry from the left over Obama’s blithe decision to send more youths to the burial ground of empire. After all, Obama spent the first Gulf War commanding the Harvard Law Review. From where does he derive the moral authority to send men into battle? I expect anguished cries of “Chickenhawk!” to soon arise from the lefty blogosphere and a nascent “Netroots for McCain!” movement to foment.

And then there’s this finding from yesterday’s ABC/WaPo poll:

On Afghanistan, however, independents side more closely with Republicans than with Democrats. Majorities of Republicans and independents think the war in Afghanistan was worth fighting and that the effort there is linked to the eventual defeat of terrorism more broadly. Majorities of Democrats disagree.

If a majority of Democrats disagree the war was worth fighting in the first place, you can wager a mega-majority of Netroots’ denizens disagree. And yet the left is silent regarding Obama’s belligerence towards the Afghanistan theatre. It’s positively puzzling. Could the explanation be that the left has suddenly developed, contra the ABC/WaPo poll, an unprecedented enthusiasm for extirpating Jihadists?

I doubt it. More likely is that the left is closing ranks around its candidate, confident that he doesn’t really mean his bluster. Note how Obama has made this unilateral military plan as a candidate without any consultations with the commanders on the ground whose opinion he purportedly so values. Like so much of what he does, the effort is redolent of hollow rhetoric. Most importantly, there’s the ever-declining value of a Barack Obama promise. Apparently even his friends are coming to doubt the clear meaning of his most unequivocal statements.

Finishing the work in Afghanistan is of the utmost importance. Exit question: Will anyone really believe that Barack Obama is serious about doing so?