The Washington Post's normally sedate columnist David Broder is getting antsy. He's impatient with President Obama, who has yet to decide how many additional troops to commit to Afghanistan. Broder now says Obama should just hurry up and decide already, even if the decision is the wrong one:

It is evident from the length of this deliberative process and from the flood of leaks that have emerged from Kabul and Washington that the perfect course of action does not exist. Given that reality, the urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right.

Broder was asking for a backlash, and he got one. Liberal bloggers in particular took him to task for his ordering of priorities. Matthew Yglesias:

I can’t believe he actually thinks that. But, again, this is one of these moments when you wonder what the editors of newspaper opinion sections are for. Surely this would have been a good opportunity for someone to say "David, you don't really mean that do you?"

The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen:

Indeed, reading today's Broder piece I get the distinct impression that the columnist had lunch with John McCain at some point this week, and then rushed back to his desk to jot down the senator's criticism. That's a shame. Given the reality, Broder was facing an editorial deadline, and he decided the urgent necessity was to write a column -- whether or not it was right.

Frequent Afghanistan commentator Spencer Ackerman:

The column makes perfectly clear that Broder has little perspective on what the right course for U.S. strategy in Afghanistan actually is. It’s evidently not a question that concerns him so greatly. What does principally concern him is that a process resolve itself. It’s hard for thinking people to accept that a choice necessarily entailing the deaths of many people ought to be divorced from its content for the sake of an outwardly-appearing orderly process.

Liberal humor blog Wonkette's Jim Newell summarizes "The Washington Post's 'Dean of Sociopath's'":

PSST… $50 if you choose the wrong one, so I can have things to criticize? Trick question, I will criticize any of them. Can I still have $50? Where did I put those slacks…

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