President Barack Obama's approval rating fell in 2009.

It was perhaps the biggest decision in President Barack Obama’s young presidency – and accordingly, global media and opinion-makers are divided in their opinion of his performance.

The New York Times applauded Obama for his “considerable political courage” and found his military arguments “persuasive”; The Wall Street Journal also stood behind the president, saying, “We support Mr. Obama’s decision, and this national effort, notwithstanding our concerns about the determination of the President and his party to see it through.”

Democrats eager to pull out of the war and to focus on domestic problems, such as the economy and healthcare, however, say that Americans will be paying for a war that the country shouldn’t even be in. Democratic Senate majority leader Harry Reid of Nevada commended Obama’s “sound strategy,’’ but also added “our resources are not unlimited and our commitment is not open-ended,’’ the Boston Globe reported. Thus far, the US has shouldered much of the physical burden of the conflict in Afghanistan, and this troop surge with push US forces in the region close to the 100,000 mark.

Other key Democrats refused to support to plan or even promised to block funding for the troop surge at this week’s congressional hearings on the plan. While Obama does not require Congress’s approval to send more troops, he does need Congress to help pay for it.

Republicans, on the other hand, support sending more troops, but disagree with the idea of setting a timetable, claiming that it undermines the US’s commitment to the region and to America’s safety. “We should have a goal of being out day after tomorrow – a goal. But it’s dictated by conditions on the ground,’’ said Senator John McCain of Arizona, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, according to the Boston Globe. “You don’t tell the enemy when you’re leaving.’’

Outside the US, and NATO responses aside, the president’s speech was met with derision. In the British press, pundits tore into the already battered flesh of Obama’s plan with characteristic relish. Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, characterized Obama’s plan as a “frantic bid to rescue what promises to be a stumbling re-election campaign that must start in 2011.” Ouch.

“It oozes with his desperation not to be in Afghanistan,” Jenkins continued, before making a throwaway comparison to Vietnam. “In Afghanistan the strategy advanced by General Stanley McChrystal is not new. It involves flooding the towns with soldiers and money and hoping the Taliban will go away for the time being. The conditionals of army retraining and corruption eradication mean nothing.”

Clive Crook, writing in the Financial Times, claimed that Obama’s logic was flawed and that the speech contradicted itself: America is not in the business of “nation-building,” but will be building up Afghanistan’s own forces to better fight the Taliban; America, in order to assure her own safety, must send 30,000 troops now, but will pull out in 18 months, regardless of the situation. “To be sure, the test of the strategy is not this speech but what happens on the ground. Maybe they have it right. As the details emerge, it will be easier to see. But tonight I felt Obama failed to express the clarity and resolve a commander in chief needs to at such a time. He did not rally the country behind this policy,” he concluded.

Even the Taliban jumped to respond: In a SkyNews exclusive report released today, Taliban forces in Pakistan dismissed the American plan, claiming that more US troops would do nothing to stop them and would in fact only solidify their resolve.