Hillary Clinton's mojo was back in spades yesterday as she firmly spelled out she wanted New Zealanders to know the United States remains committed to Afghanistan.

"We are committed in great numbers but we value deeply the contributions of New Zealand."

In Washington the fundamental question of whether President Barack Obama will commit more troops to Afghanistan, in line with the wishes of his top generals, dominates the wall-to-wall television news coverage.

Many Americans are spooked that Afghanistan is turning into a Vietnam-style quagmire and want the troops extricated.

The War on Terrorism - which Obama has since called the "war of necessity" - is no longer seen as compelling to a nation beset by more immediate domestic concerns such as the rising jobless and mortgagee sales.

Clinton herself displayed considerable cool as she magisterially replied to her interlocutors during a one-hour television special this week - setting out the complex issues but stopping well short of outlining where she thinks Obama will come down.

For instance, underwriting another "surge" with the 40,000 extra troops General Stan McChrystal wants, or a lesser commitment numerically, combined with smart strategies to deal with problems surrounding the ability of the Karzai Government to govern.

It is a decision all New Zealanders have an interest in. But unfortunately it is not a topic which has sparked substantive debate in our country.

It should. Particularly as the 70 SAS special forces that Prime Minister John Key committed to Afghanistan after receiving a personal telephone call from Obama this year have already been deployed.

There is a fundamental question why New Zealanders should feel confident of the wisdom of this decision given the Obama Administration has still not made up its own mind on the extent of America's future commitment.

Clinton directly acknowledged the confidence issue when I put a question to her during a press briefing at the State Department in Washington DC yesterday.

She reiterated that the US was committed to Afghanistan and characterised the review currently under way in the American capital as "taking a very hard scrub" to make sure the US was on the right track.

She was clearly fired up when she told me: "We just want to be sure that when we send a young man or woman from New Zealand or the United States, we are sending them to Afghanistan with the maximum capacity to be successful - it is a vision that we share."