Actually, I’ll use this dupe to address your question on Afghanistan.
Speaking from experience on counterinsurgency operations, I will say this: The greatest danger in Afghanistan is what is referred to as “mission creep”. We saw it in Vietnam, where we landed the 1st Marines at Da Nang in 1965 and within a few years, had 500,000 troops in country.
There isn’t a clear plan in Afghanistan. There are several competing ideas and thoughts and the most dangerous of these center on nation building, which in a country like Afghanistan is sheer lunacy.
So, the choices really boil down to two: One, get the major combat forces the hell out and focus on what was successful in 2001: Emphasis on Special Operations Forces (SOF), backed by air power and drones and with a specifically focused mission (interdicting the Taliban and al-Qaeda), or, Two, commit tens of thousands of additional American soldiers and Marines, which will cost many more billions of dollars and longer casualty lists for years and years to come.
While the answer really is obvious, the question becomes what Obama is politically prepared to do. In many ways, the questions he’s facing are not different from those faced by LBJ in 1964, and we all know how that turned out.
