President Barack Obama’s handpicked general, General David Petraeus, presently leading the war effort in Afghanistan, will soon ask the commander-in-chief for more time, the New York Times reports. This comes nearly 9 months after Obama courageously decided on a surge in Afghanistan, adding 30,000 troops to fight in the war. But the additional troops, at least not all of them, have arrived. That should happen only by the end of this month.

When Obama declared his intention of redoubling the U.S. effort in Afghanistan, he first stressed the reason for entering the war in the first place: “We did not ask for this fight. On September 11, 2001, 19 men hijacked four airplanes and used them to murder nearly 3,000 people.  They struck at our military and economic nerve centers.  They took the lives of innocent men, women, and children without regard to their faith or race or station.  Were it not for the heroic actions of passengers onboard one of those flights, they could have also struck at one of the great symbols of our democracy in Washington, and killed many more.”