"Ratfucked"

Ambers explains what happened to Obama when the McChrystal report was leaked. The core problem with the counter-insurgency model is the lack of any credible Afghan government to do the counter-insurgency for. There are no great options, but Biden is surely onto something with this alternative strategy:

Removing the incentives for the Taliban to be radicalized and destroying the leadership of Al Qaeda -- basically, bribing people and killing people, and doing so indefinitely, but with irregular and special operations forces -- is the alternative. The Biden alternative focuses on the intricate connections between India, Pakistan and Afghanistan. Briefly put, Pakistan facilitates the Taliban and various insurgencies in Afghanistan because it preserves the option of living space to the north -- part of the grand goal of turning Pakistan into a haven for Islam. Kashmir's fate is crucial to this dynamic. But India won't talk about Kashmir; Pakistan won't -- can't -- truly cut off ties with the Taliban until Kashmir is dealt with -- and the U.S seems to have no leverage whatsoever.

The criterion surely has to be whether the reduction of a risk from that region (and a commitment of resources away from other hot-spots and failed states) is worth the billions of dollars, unknown lives and unexpected consequences that continuing the occupation for another decade would entail. I have yet to be convinced that even the Iraqi surge worked in allowing the US to safely withdraw (the US is still there in massive numbers, remember, and the sectarian tensions have not disappeared). I do acknowledge that there could be a cost to leaving Afghanistan; equally there are enormous costs to staying.