Good causes are an elusive concept. They’re often the opposite of good feeling. They imply a lack of good times now, and sacrifices on the way to achieving a worthy goal and a lasting relief.

President Obama’s Afghan War escalation rationale last night was a good speech. What the cause is, though, is a shifting target. The goals, as articulated, are a cordon against terrorist staging-grounds and nuclear takeover, a model of principled global policing and sound humanitarian and civil support that makes all sides feel safer in partnership with each other, not secure in each other’s demise.

The purpose, as understood by all and stated by everyone but the president, is to underwrite his image of leadership so that he and his party can remain in power long enough to advance an agenda of relief and uplift for our own precarious country — affordable and available healthcare, nominal checks on corporate grand theft, steps toward reversing our industrial decline with new jobs and technologies which might reverse ecological collapse.

These urgent needs — and the consequent importance of limiting our overseas commitments in relation to them — were addressed toward the end of the president’s speech; those goals, and the abstract ideas of a world stable enough that they can be pursued by all, were the only lines that got applause from what was otherwise the most solemn audience of teenagers and very young twentysomethings I’ve ever seen.

In articulating those ideals, the speech was positively Gerson-esque. George W. Bush’s original speechwriter produced some of the best progressive oratory this country has heard in a long time. It was entirely unconnected to its speaker’s intentions, whereas the Obama speech last night was merely disconnected from reality. Afghanistan has no duly elected leader, and no government to speak of. The badguys strolled out the backdoor at Tora Bora eight years ago — the ones who attacked us, I mean; the ones who used to control the country are strolling back to fill the vast void around Karzai. As even early war supporter Thomas Friedman points out, the Afghan people need no “training” to become a fighting force; we’re not stuck there because we’re needed, we’re failing there because we’re not wanted. Afghanistan’s been kicking out superpowers for thousands of years. Alexander the Great gave up on this place, but then, he didn’t have to worry about being re-elected.

What *could* make us wanted? If anything, taking this project out of the Defense Department and putting it in the State Department. Many of our soldiers on the ground have pacified what areas in Iraq and Afghanistan they have not with bullets but with micro-diplomacy and door-to-door economic aid. We’ve given militias jobs and turned them to our side, we’ve brokered local disputes with warlords and their populations. It shouldn’t be a soldier’s duty, but most of them do it with dedication and sincerity. They also do it with pragmatism and emotional common sense: they realize it’s what will most help keep them and the ordinary people around them alive. They don’t do it with professional training, a master plan or any overall resources and authority. A Marshall Plan for Afghanistan and Pakistan (the latter of which the president is at least attempting to some degree), including economic development for the Afghans (who have world-class marble reserves they can’t excavate as easily as heroin poppies), would show what America can do for them (which fosters cooperation), not who can subdue them (which triggers resistance — and has resulted in an eight-year, daily defeat for the strongest country in the world).

Americans thought of Afghanistan as the good war of our two current ones. That’s evaporated along with all the stated objectives that sent us in. And with dwindling memories; Obama now has to contend with the belated pacifism of a Democratic Congress cynically second-guessing the action they gave a blank check to to begin with. Deliberating only after deciding is of no more use than, say, planning an occupation only after executing an invasion. That’s Congress’ problem, and Obama’s is trying to fight the war of 2002 in 2009. What could work — and yes, what might even have worked in the rush to retaliate and revert to old rules after 9/11 — is to fight on terms our enemies can’t comprehend but every ordinary person does: to present the better alternative. Our soldiers and citizens, on every side, are those ordinary people. Our leaders and commanders never are.

The president read off a list of the ways he has confronted the costs of war when his predecessor concealed them — visiting wounded troops and bereaved families; honestly accounting for the tax moneys being drained from a bankrupt country for the nation-building abroad to continue; traveling to the flag-draped coffins at Dover. This was his way of emphasizing that he’s ready to accept the consequences of his decisions. But each time the camera swept over the look of utter terror on the faces of most of these kids, it was a reminder that he, like every president, and we, like every civilian citizenry, are really only ready to accept *their* consequences.

No leader wants to be the one who backed down; no everyday person wants to be the one to abandon fellow human beings to a deadly fate they feel they should have tried to stop. But everyone learns by making mistakes, and learns to make less of them by admitting they happened. Obama faces a restless electorate and a loud lunatic fringe. What he wants to do for all of them could be in danger if any overseas conflict becomes “his” lost war. But he’s done very well so far by calling our country to face reality and to escape bad times by going through them, not thinking there’s a way around. We have lost Afghanistan. We can still win America, and serve as an example that does people everywhere good. It’s not the best news. But it’s the fight worth facing.