Vice President Biden’s position is closer to President Obama’s earlier vision of what needed to be done in Afghanistan. I think that the perceived effectiveness of the surge in Iraq & the Bush admin hold-overs combined with the instability in Pakistan led to an expanded and unrealistic plan. The Afghan election and the events on the ground have been a reality-check revealing an intractable situation.

I think personal considerations also cannot be discounted in President Obama’s long deliberations. His trip to Dover AFB showed that he is not shielding himself from the consequences of escalating the war. On the political front, he seems to viscerally dislike President Karzai making unfavorable comments about him in speeches over the last 2 years.

I think your “suspended expectations” are spot on. I think the most likely outcome will be more troops but with something like triggers for starting or stopping certain types of operations… ex, military operations might be limited in time and scope until/unless the Afghan govt does x or y. Even if there’s a decision to de-escalate or redirect the mission as VP Biden recommends, we may see a short-term increase of troops. It will probably get worse before it gets better, even in the best case scenario (if such a thing exists).

It makes me want to cry when I think of the opportunity we lost when President Bush walked out of Afghanistan in his pig-headed pursuit of Saddam.

What would such a strategy look like? Well, at the very least it requires some moderation of the strategic competition between India and Pakistan. Without attention to this aspect of the problem, we really are only playing around at the edges of the conflict.

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