Martha Kearney's week

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By Martha Kearney Presenter, BBC Radio 4's World at One

Both men have a lot at stake in Afghanistan

This was the week in which Afghanistan became President Obama's war rather than George Bush's conflict.

That was the view of a Democrat Congressman Jim McGovern who is totally opposed to the surge strategy which was announced this week.

There is real disquiet in Obama's own party about the decision to send 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan.

In a vote this summer the majority of House Democrats supported Mr McGovern's amendment calling for a formal plan to bring the troops home.

I spoke to him on Wednesday along with Dr David Kilcullen, a chief strategist at the State department during the Bush administration and now a senior adviser to General Stanley McChrystal who is in charge of the NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Troop surge

We discussed what the extra troops would mean and also President Obama's decision to announce an exit strategy, which should see troops begin to come home in 2011.

That statement has been strongly criticised on the grounds that it helps the Taleban. The militants can simply say to people on the ground the Americans will be going in a couple of years while we are here for the long term.

So why did the President decide to make that announcement?

One good reason is that it puts pressure on Afghan leader Hamid Karzai to deliver on his pledges in particular about training up Afghan police and troops.

The second reason is political. Obama needs to give a sense to his own party and to the American people that this is not an open-ended mission and that the troops will be coming home.

Quagmire fear

The great fear, of course, is that America is caught up in another Vietnam quagmire.

There are many parallels with that conflict according to the eminent American academic Philip Bobbitt.

He is the author of Terror and Consent and The Shield of Achilles. He also has a special locus for talking about Vietnam as his uncle was President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Professor Bobbitt told me one of the most worrying parallels is that the US has ended up supporting a corrupt and unpopular leader.

Unless Hamid Karzai shows real signs of change, the mission is doomed.

That is why Gordon Brown is calling a special conference in January to which the Afghan President has been invited along with all the international partners with an interest in the country.

With the Prime Minister's decision to send more troops - albeit on a different scale to President Obama - he too has ownership of the war but with far less power to determine the final outcome.

Public unease

As well as growing signs of disquiet among the British public about the conflict, the families of those wounded and killed are becoming much more vocal.

First there was Jacqui Janes who forced an apology from the Prime Minister after he mispelled her son's name in a condolence letter.

Then this week Ian Sadler, whose son was killed in Helmand in 2007 by a mine told, The Report on Radio 4 that he only just received a letter from the Prime Minister.

He was angered by that and also by what he believes is a lack of equipment for British soldiers on the front line.

But his interview provoked this email from Marianne, one of our listeners:

"I am beside myself with rage by all of these 'grieving' parents complaining about letters," she wrote. "It is becoming more like jumping on the election bandwagon than true grief.

When my father and many others in the 1939-45 war were killed a 'cyclostyled' letter was the only notification that was received. The grieving widows, parents and children of those killed were left to manage on their own and did so a lot better than the wimps of today.

Please, please stop giving them airtime - I would hate to keep turning my radio off every time the News started. Besides it is no good for my blood pressure."

An interesting thought from an older generation.