Recommended: The Afghanistan Reboot: Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together?

I recommend the article in this week's Time Magazine entitled The Afghanistan Reboot: Can Obama and Petraeus Work Together? It summarizes the difficult position both the Obama administration and the military find themselves in in Afghanistan.

Frankly, I still don't see any good outcome in Afghanistan. President Karzai is not the leader who can weld that nation into anything resembling a stable society. He is too embedded in the endemic corruption. The Pakistan intelligence services remain involved up to their eyeballs, and not on our side. And there is no prospect of our ever "pacifying" the local tribes unless we are prepared to essentially occupy the country, and perhaps not even then. Meanwhile we are pouring American lives and trillions of dollars we can't afford into this war, and leaving it as a lever that both Iran and Russia use to keep us preoccupied and militarily stretched, and therefore unable to respond to their own moves to expand their areas of influence and control.

It seems to me once again a case of politicians (Republican and Democrat alike) woefully ignorant of the appropriate use of military force.