Most Afghans felt that once al-Qaeda bases had been dismantled and most of its leaders killed, captured or forced out of Afghanistan President Bush was no longer interested in what he saw as a sideshow to the bigger task of liberating Iraq and reshaping the Middle East. Afghans believe that Obama is even less interested in Afghanistan and would jump at an opportunity to cut and run. "Since we don't know what the Americans really want, we let them do it themselves," a senior Afghan official told me in Kabul.

That analysis has promoted a "room service" mentality in which Afghan military and civilian officials simply pick up the telephone to Nato forces whenever they want something done. In most cases, Nato responds in kind, that is to say also with "as if". 

President Obama's delayed admission that he has no strategy should be welcomed if only because pretence never wins wars. The President is also abandoning his claim that Afghanistan is "a war of necessity", and moving closer to considering it a war of choice. That, too, is welcome. As a war of choice, Afghanistan would make sense. For success there could help encourage the tide of democratisation that is shaking the despots in Iran, has turned back the Islamists in Pakistan and is challenging post-Soviet authoritarian regimes in Central Asia.

If he adopts Afghanistan as a war of choice, President Obama should discard the many myths that surround that country. Afghanistan is not "the graveyard of empires". In fact, it was part of more than two dozen empires until a Persian adventurer, Ahmad Shah Duran, decided to transform it into a separate kingdom in 1702. 

President Obama should use his much-lauded rhetorical talents to mobilise public support for project Afghanistan, with victory as a clear objective rather than a vague aspiration to be shunned for reasons of political expediency. The US and its Nato and Afghan allies have already crushed a good part of the insurgency in Afghanistan. What they now face is the consolidation of a hard-won success that, unless protected for many more years, could be undone by the enemies of the Western democracies who happen to be enemies of the Afghan people as well. 

Afghanistan has a military problem that needs a military solution. US strategists are beginning to realise this. This war could, and must, be won.