“Winning”

Yglesias:

[W]hat I really haven’t seen is anyone attempt to seriously lay out some kind of cost-benefit analysis of how important this whole Afghanistan situation really is relative to what I’m being told it would take to “win.” It seems to me not that we should “lose” instead, but rather that we should define “winning” as us achieving something useful and realistic rather than something grandiose and out of proportion to its actual importance.