ARTICLE: No Givens As Obama Steps Onto World Stage, By Michael D. Shear, Washington Post, March 29, 2009; Page A01

I must admit: a recent reader's question of "what is different?" about Obama's plan from Bush's old approach does ring some truth for me. Given what Bush was doing and likely to do in any refocused operation, I don't think it would have looked that differently in the tactics. The only real differences are the decision to focus on it (which I guess Bush would have eventually done) and what we don't yet know/see in terms of reaching out to regional players (and that is a big difference--especially with Iran). But the tactics (numbers, more civ effort, build up Afghan gov/econ, shoot up FATA, talk to Taliban), except for talk to Taliban, aren't really that different. Why? Bush didn't have a policy per se. He had a military in charge for a while. And that hasn't really changed with Obama.