Tel Aviv - So President Barack Obama has decided to "stay the course." The obstinate battle cry of the Bush administration in Iraq has now won out in Obama's planned surge of an additional 30,000 troops in Afghanistan. A Taliban victory there, the advocates of the surge had warned, would radicalize the entire region and create a domino effect, with Islamic insurgencies unleashed across Central Asia. Al Qaeda, inextricably entwined with the Taliban, would also claim victory if America had signaled a retreat.