The United States is pretending that we have a reliable foe that we can negotiate with in Afghanistan. Sadly, losing that war is a bipartisan objective.
We really can't trust the Taliban to make peace:
Americans want to be done with the military and economic costs of having troops in Afghanistan. The problem with that attitude is that Americans can leave Afghanistan but Afghanistan won’t leave America. The heroin production will continue and major Islamic terrorist groups will have a sanctuary from which to plan attacks on the Wests, especially the United States.
We should be working to help the Afghan government and local entities kill the Taliban more effectively; and killing Taliban from the air to support them.
We had to engage in Iraq War 2.0 after prematurely walking away. Do we want to face that situation in Afghanistan, too, or pay the relatively small price to defend what we achieved at a large cost?
I fear I know the answer. And note that in that October 2013 post I was openly worried about Iraq.
UPDATE: Eric who does work here emails that he argued that Obama failed to use his opportunity to convince the American people to hold fast long enough to win the war.
As I addressed in that last link in the original post, I don't think Obama had any intention of winning the Afghanistan campaign. He ran for president opposed to the Iraq War, claiming it "distracted" America from winning the "real" war on terror in Afghanistan. His only objective for his surge was to pretend he wanted to win in Afghanistan long enough to proclaim a win and win reelection.
