AXELROD AND THE COMMON MAN.

Presidential adviser David Axelrod might be right in stating that the president was considering "a lot of different factors", including the fraud allegations concerning the recent presidential election in Afghanistan, and America's strained relationship with Pakistan, in addition to other factors, with the troop request among them.

It seemed like he was downplaying the troop demand in a speech at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, by saying, "We've tried it the other way, and it didn't work."; obviously referring to President Bush's policies in Iraq; however, that was false.

It was the added troops, commonly referred to as the surge, that changed the outcome in Iraq; and although, the situation there has not finalized, the United States did not have an enemy country on its hands.

The Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have also said that the troop question was not for public debate; and we all agree with that statement.

However, President Obama should learn about what the common man in the street was thinking; and therefore a little window, slightly as it might be, should be opened for that purpose.

That was to let him know that he, in the grand scheme of all the topics that he was dealing with, should prioritize his goals to make it easy for him, in his deliberations toward those topics; and all an outsider would say was to have him place the troop request at the head of the list.

The fraud in the Afghanistan election was an internal affair; the balked relationship with Pakistan was a diplomatic subject; which, needless to say, could be handled by the State Department, while he contemplated what would happen if the Taliban gained the upper hand.

That was all that the common man and woman in the street were requesting; a simple piece of advise that would come in very handy at a critical point in the war against those who caused September 11th, 2001, attacks to happen. There would be no relenting on their part until they had done more damage to America; and that should be at the top of the president's mind, even now.

With all due respect to the president's members of the cabinet and political advisers, the little chance to speak their mind (the common man and woman) to the war effort, would make a difference in what the White House would eventually decide on it. They knew that, in the final analysis, it was the president's own decision that would count.