After reading this, I am even further convinced that we need to pull out. What the general asks cannot be done without massive assistance from the world. Our country alone, even with the paltry help we are getting from our allied coalition cannot possibly succeed and I think that is exactly what is written between the lines of his speech. All this talk of “patience” and “understanding” don’t mean squat to me. The threat of terrorist attacks increasing was not mentioned, only that Al Queida will return if we leave. Al Queida, a miniscule number of people less than the size of a battalion is dictating our policy that we cannot afford to pay for any longer.

The whole idea of escalating Afghanistan virtually alone is preposterous. Ether the world wants to do something about this terrorism problem, or they don’t. Our people cannot subsidize the civilization of endemically divided backward tribes. You cannot bring millions of people 2000 years into the modern world successfully on any time frame I am willing to accept. Especially on a time frame without even the basic definition of how much time he is talking about.

The resources of the United States is NOT infinite. Nor is our patience.

Leonidas' idea is probably a good start, but I hope Obama is looking beyond military solutions. There's an excellent article in Esquire about combat in NE Afghanistan. In the journalistic account, it took days and nights of strenuous hiking, with air support, to get into a remote valley that may or may not yield a half dozen of the enemy. Several of our troops had to be airlifted out because they couldn't go on, became dehydrated or got injured. That just doesn't seem like a winnable scenario. All opposing troops have to do is lay low and wait. After all, they live there. They don't have to fight well-armed American troops, just wait til they leave.