According to a report from the ground by NY Times Op Ed writer, Max Boot, when the First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment entered Nawa, a poor, rural district in southern Afghanistan’s strategic Helmand River Valley, the bazaar was shut down and the streets empty. Today, 70 stores are open and the streets are full of trucks and pedestrians, and when the Taliban try to sneak in, the locals alert the Marines. The key to the change: the infusion of additional U.S. troops. (Access Op Ed.)

This strategy – to add boots on the ground, focus troops around key regional population centers, establish safe zones in those centers, and then spread out to the surrounding countryside – is the strategy that General Petraeus took into Iraq, the strategy the Democrats insisted would not work, then insisted was not working while even left-leaning news reporters admitted it was, and about which then-Senator Hilary Clinton (among others) claimed Petraeus was “cooking the books.” That strategy worked in Iraq, and it’s working wherever it’s tried in Afghanistan.

It is the plan bequeathed to the Obama Administration by the Bush Administration. The plan the Obama Administration says it is coming up with by tossing out the “failed policies” of the Bush Administration and redesigning strategy from the ground up. The plan former Vice President Dick Cheney just reminded the nation is “suspiciously similar to” the Bush Administration’s policy in Iraq. The plan Cheney revealed the Obama transition team asked the Bush Administration not to publicize that they were handing off to the incoming President. It is that plan. (Access Cheney comments.)

It is the plan that has worked not only in Iraq and in select sites in Afghanistan, but also in other radical-Islamist-ridden countries in the Middle East and Southeast Asia. It is the plan General McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan, has argued for in Afghanistan. It is the plan that needs a minimum of 40,000 new troops. It is the plan Obama has so far “supported” with just half that number, 21,000 new troops – pretty much tying one hand behind the General’s back. (Can anyone say “Viet Nam”?)

It’s that plan.

Even NY Times’ Nicholas Kristof, a long-time critic of the Bush Administration’s Iraq and Middle East strategies, advocates a policy “suspiciously similar to” the Bush Administration’s policy under General Petraeus. (Access Kristof Editorial.) Though Kristof does not want to see more troops committed to Afghanistan, he does think the current troops should be re-deployed to protecting cities only, while building up and training the Afghan Army. He also wants to see more diplomatic and financial incentives applied to switching the loyalties of Afghan tribal leaders, and an effort to build stronger relations with southern Afghanistan’s Pashtuns. And Kristof is opposed to a U.S. pullout for the same reasons the Bush team opposed pulling out: it would “be a disastrous signal of American weakness and would destabilize Pakistan.”

Again, this is the Petraeus Doctrine: The Bush policy bequeathed to the Obama Administration on the hush-hush. (Though nobody who pays attention to the public strategy and policy discussions could fail to see the close similarity between the “new” Obama plan and the proven Bush plan, even absent Mr. Cheney’s comments yesterday; it’s just nice to have the Veep’s confirmation.) It’s nice to see the Obama Administration is finally coming on board with the Bush Administration, however disingenuously they’d like to do so.

However, since we have achieved some bipartisan agreement on strategy both in and out of government, I’d rather we take the advice on troop commitments from the General on the ground in Afghanistan than the opinion – however educated – of either NY Times columnist or our politics-focused President. I have an ideological predilection for the assessment of Boot, who has a history of supporting American use of might in the world to advance democracy, even though – in his mellowing years – he has moved more to the center (he was a foreign policy advisor to Presidential candidate McCain). And I am more inclined to trust the perspective of Kristof than the President, because Kristof has traveled through the Middle East for decades, speaks Arabic, and knows a lot of ordinary people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, even though he has a tendency to oppose military solutions to world problems. I am least interested in trusting the calculations of an inexperienced community organizer, short-term junior Senator, and waffling new President more interested in domestic ideological agendas than strategic international politics.

Mr. Obama is the last person who should be deciding the course of action in Afghanistan. General McChrystal is the first, especially when NY Times columnists from the center right and left find common ground around the General’s strategy. All Obama should do is acquiesce – in full – to the General’s assessment and requests.

He really doesn’t know enough to do anything more than acknowledge what his betters in and out of uniform are telling him: there is no substitute for boots on the ground.