Joshua Foust criticizes the Administration's inability to say what victory is or how to measure if we're close:
[Obama's team] defines victory in the war as absence: Afghanistan is a success if X does not happen. It is an impossible goal, as a single act could lead to defeat. By President Obama’s defnition of victory, success means al Qaeda can never use Afghanistan or Pakistan to threaten the United States. This then means the war is either already won, or it will never be won — al Qaeda does not have a safe haven in Afghanistan and is “on the ropes,” or, alternatively, we must stay there forever to make sure it never has a safe haven in Afghanistan or Pakistan. This is strategic incoherence at its most stark.
Paul Rogers neatly explains why the Surge has failed at the specific objective of producing a negotiated settlement. Image above from Pew's latest report. Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans were "asked what single word best describes their experience in those countries. Size of the word is proportional to the number of times it was volunteered."
The Dish 