(From the Financial Times) What would have been barely thinkable a year ago was by Tuesday night almost déjà vu. In announcing 30,000 new US troops for Afghanistan following three months of leak-riddled deliberation, Barack Obama has with great reluctance created his own analogue of the 21,500 troop surge George W. Bush announced for Iraq almost three years ago.

But there the parallels end. In Mr Bush’s case, the military escalation was open-ended. In contrast, Mr Obama said that US forces would begin to withdraw from Afghanistan within a year of the fresh troops having arrived. In announcing his surge, Mr Bush was going with the grain of his party. Mr Obama is going strongly against the grain of his.

Mr Obama opposed George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq as a war of choice. On Tuesday night Mr Obama made his most detailed case so far for viewing the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda as one of continued necessity.

Citing recent domestic terrorist plots that could be traced to the AfPak region, Mr Obama said: “This is no idle danger; no hypothetical threat.” He even raised the spectre of terrorists seizing Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. “We know that al-Qaeda and other extremists seek nuclear weapons, and we have every reason to believe that they would use them,” he said.

Read more here: Obama gambles his presidency on Afghanistan