(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SPEAKER OF THE HOUSE NANCY PELOSI, D-CALIF.: That we all respected that he was looking into every aspect of this, and that we would, again, honor what he had to say. Whether we agreed with it or voted for it remains to be seen.

SENATE MINORITY LEADER MITCH MCCONNELL, R-KY.: I hope that at the end of the day that the president will follow the advice some of some of our finest generals who we believe know what it would take to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan.

SEN. JOHN MCCAIN, R-ARIZ.: Half-measures is what I worry about, not getting completely out of Afghanistan.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

JIM ANGLE, GUEST HOST: Congressional leaders emerging from a meeting at the White House with President Obama on Afghanistan.

Let's bring in our panel: Fred Barnes, executive editor of The Weekly Standard; A.B. Stoddard, associate editor of The Hill, and syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer.

President Obama told everyone this is a difficult decision. He understands how important it is. Charles, is he engaging in careful deliberation or stalling for time because there are no easy - certainly no easy political options here?

CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER, SYNDICATED COLUMNIST: You know, it isn't as if Afghanistan sprung up on him a week ago. It has been around for eight years. He has been running for president for two years on a promise to resource the war adequately, to look at it seriously and to win it. That's what the Democrats have proposed.

So it has been a serious issue for over two years. He says in March, he announces on March 27, a new comprehensive strategy, so he has been thinking about this. And then he added, which is not often remembered, this comes at the conclusion of a review. When he goes through all the people he consulted with, the commanders on the ground, allies, NGOs and the governments in Afghanistan and Pakistan and members of Congress - it was a serious review in March.

He appoints his own general later and then he says two months ago it is a war of necessity. You would think he has thought it through.

And now all of a sudden he is rethinking it. It is because of the political pressure. The public opinion polls are going negative on him. He has gotten his left in the party and it is all about the politics. It is not about the strategy.

You have the best generals in the world. McChrystal on counterterrorism and Petraeus on counterinsurgency - the best in the world who know exactly how this is done and who conclude you cannot do a counterterrorism strategy, only counterinsurgency.

And all of a sudden he is relying on Biden, Rahm Emanuel and himself to go against the advice of these experts?

Hard to believe.

ANGLE: A.B., he is in a bit of a bind here because, one, the base of his party doesn't want to do anything in Afghanistan, it would appear.

But on the other hand, if you do not put in the troops that General McChrystal wants and has recommended, you are taking a big risk that if something happens with Al Qaeda from Afghanistan, that he would be blamed for the rest of his presidency for not having followed the advice of his generals.

A.B. STODDARD, ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE HILL: That is true. But Vice President Biden and perhaps General Colin Powell and General Jim Jones and others are advising that the threat really remains now in Pakistan, and that Al Qaeda is concentrated there and that if we spend resources we don't have militarily in Afghanistan at this point to go after the Taliban when Al Qaeda is an international global terrorist threat more pressing to our national security, that he will blow a chance to get into Pakistan at the right time and take care of Al Qaeda where it's based.

And that, I think, although there are political pressures from Moveon and the left of his party, to be certain is, I think, a huge challenge to weigh.

I agree with Charles that he laid out his own strategy and General McChrystal has come up with a plan for the mission that president Obama outlined in March.

But he is not just listening to Rahm Emanuel and Vice President Biden. He is listening to a chorus of voices who are concerned that Pakistan is where Al Qaeda is concentrated and we have to spend our resources there.

ANGLE: It was just mid-August when the president said, what Charles had been referring to, this was not a war of choice. This was a war of necessity. Those who attacked on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked the Taliban insurgency will be an even larger safe haven from which Al Qaeda will plot to kill more Americans.

That was in mid-August. It is a pretty clear assessment of what the stakes are here.

FRED BARNES, EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE WEEKLY STANDARD: Indeed.

And he also said, Jim, that he wanted an integrated strategy, that basically you couldn't do just Pakistan. You had to do Pakistan and Afghanistan, because if the Taliban takes over in Afghanistan, it would obviously open it up for Al Qaeda to return there, and it would put enormous pressure on Pakistan and on and on. And he was correct about that.

What I worry about is exactly what John McCain mentioned and that is a halfway measure. And that is the sort of emanations you feel coming out of the White House, that he would do this, rather than - he could affirm - I think there's three choices:

He could affirm the strategy and back General McChrystal and send in more troops.

He could go with Joe Biden and have just withdraw troops and have a counterterrorism strategy, which you can do anyway because we're already doing it with the predators going after Al Qaeda chieftains and so on.

Or the third strategy, where you don't change strategy but have a halfway measure. And the one you hear is well, we'll send in 10,000 troops and they will be trainers for the Afghan troops. In other words, we will say we're sticking there but it is a half measure and it will lead to defeat.

That's what I'm afraid the White House will do.

ANGLE: Charles, on half-measures, one of the things is we have tried to get the Afghans to go along with us. We have made certain commitments.

The historian Bernard Lewis said a few years ago when we were talking about withdrawing from Iraq that the U.S. risked being seen as "harmless as an enemy and treacherous as a friend."

Is that the kind of judgment that is hanging in the balance here?

KRAUTHAMMER: Look, if you're - the war in Afghanistan hinges on which way the people go. The enemy has very low support in public opinion, around 6 percent. They don't want to return to the bad old days.

However, if you're a peasant who is not political either way, all you want to know is who is going to be here next week after the Americans leave, if the Americans leave? If the Americans leave, I'm going to get slaughtered. If the Americans stay, I join the Americans, I fight them. It all hinges on that.

They don't want to be left behind the way the Mung were in Southeast Asia or the South Vietnamese who supported us. And it's all about staying and it's all about resolve.

The president is showing this incredible ambivalence and almost regret for the way he, in a way, sort of committed himself early. If you're an Afghani, you are worried about supporting the Americans.