Can we achieve success in Afghanistan? Well, it all comes down to what we define as success, because a democratic and secular Islamic country is certainly not in the cards. So if anybody is using that as a yard stick for success, then these 10 years will prove to have been a miserable failure. If success is a stable enough central government with massive corruption for the foreseeable future and heavily dependent on international support for the many years to come, then we have succeeded. I’ve been in Afghanistan for 2 months, and it has been far worse than I expected. Even in Kabul, it is not safe to move around from base to base…amazing. GIROA and Coalition forces can’t even secure ONE city, the capital city, so how in the heck can they secure the rough countryside with very limited GIROA reach?

To add to this, the international community has spent tens of billions on improvements to Afghan infrastructure, and from what I’ve seen, these are some of the worst examples of squalor and filth I’ve ever seen. While we can’t just leave the country, given that the central government gets 90-97% of its budget from the international community, we certainly can’t continue down this path. I really expected the president to order 15,000 troops out this year, and the read by next summer to stress to the afghans, the need to work much harder to establish a solid reconciliation amongst themselves and pursue peace. We are NOT going to eliminate the Taliban, because what the Taliban represent are the fundamentalist and traditional in many respects. I don’t see us eliminating the religious right in America, so I’m not sure why people believe it’s possible over here, in a society much more entrench in tradition.

How about the Eagle Plan from now on?
1. A calling of an “Afghanistan peace conference” only between the Taliban tribal leaders and the Karzai Government--to convene as of a specified future date.
2.The announcement of a cease-fire as of that date.
3.The commitment that the United States will abide by whatever peace settlement of the Afghanistan war can be achieved by these parties.
4.The offer of regional financial loans for the rebuilding of war-damaged communities and the development of roads, irrigation and electrical power projects

(source: http://www.whitehousevoice.com/mklarfeld80199/Proposals/Peace-with-HONOR-1215)

Afghanistan is not a nation... its 4 nations banged together by 3 Brits and 1 Ruski 110 year ago. Not a single citizen therein had a say drawing the borders imposed thus are illegitimate. The war is the Northern Front grouping Tajiks, Hazara and Uzbek, is all about crushing the Talebs. who are all Pushtoon from certain Pushtoon clans. They number a mere 30,000 and can and do draw support from other Pushtoon who number 45 million. A source of recruits whenever some 20 year old tattoted idiots in a CIA bunker in Nevada slams a drone on some villagers seen praying so assume them to be Talebs. .

So who is leaving the battlefields after 10 years?

"A failed or failing state with nuclear weapons and multiple anti-American terrorist groups operating freely is a U.S. national security nightmare and must be prevented at all costs".

How? Invade it? Bomb it as Armitage threatened? Break it up into separate Punjabi, Sindi, Mohajir and Baluchi nations? As we are doing willy nilly and idiotically in A'stan?

When empire decline by self destruction. Started in 1/ 2001

The common claim, that the problems faced by the U.S. effort in Afghanistan stem in large part from interference or lack of cooperation from Pakistan, is not only untrue but curiously is also the reverse of the truth.

Actually, the main factor making the U.S. position in Pakistan problematic is the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.

President Obama went into Afghanistan as cover for resolving the military adventure in Iraq. Even as he went in, he laid the basis for the transition out by saying the goal of the intervention was to root out a terrorist threat that we had already been telling ourselves for some time had moved elsewhere. Thus, he had the option of declaring victory whenever convenient, and of course he was quite clear that he would start the transition out in 2011, well before the end of his term.

As astute as President Obama has been with respect to Iraq and Afghanistan, it seems that he did not foresee the impact that this maneuver would have on relations with Pakistan. In this, the President was abominably advised by those who spoke of "AfPak" and how Afghanistan and Pakistan are "detached twins," resulting in quixotic, failed, and counterproductive efforts to twist Pakistan policy in some way that would support the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.

In the process the U.S. paid no attention to Pakistan as it actually is. Afghanistan is not a core issue for Pakistan, but the U.S. policy succeeded in temporarily making it one -- in an anti-U.S. way. The path out of this unnecessary dead-end may be long, but President Obama's Afghanistan speech takes the first step.

At some point when the U.S. and Pakistan are free of the thrall of Afghanistan, the U.S. will have to initiate the process of formulating a policy about the real Pakistan.

Obama's proposed withdrawal is a fake. It is equivalent to a two-pack a day smoker saying that they are quitting smoking by smoking one less cigarette a day.

Previous US ambassador Anne Patterson to Pakistan, wrote in a secret review in 2009 that ‘Pakistan's Army and ISI are covertly SPONSORING four militant groups - Haqqani‘s HQN, Mullah Omar‘s QST, Al Qaeda and LeT - and will not abandon them for any amount of US money‘, as diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks show.

Ambassador Patterson had NO reason to mislead her own State Department and U. S. government.

And there is NO reason why Pakistani Army and ISI will stop supporting their proxies fighting war against US/NATO troops in Afghanistan from their safe shelters in Pakistan at this point when U. S. is ready to leave. Ambassador Patterson has clearly told us that much.

At this stage in the game after the death of Osama bin Laden and ten long years of war, as far as the US is concerned, the war on terror is over; feeble clarifications by the State Department, that the larger war on Al Qaeda shall continue, are inconsequential. Pakistan knows that by skillfully holding out till now, it is close to getting its proxy regime in place in Kabul. Pakistani and American interests, both short-term and medium-term, converge at this point; a broke and tired America can not afford to look at long-term interests, not at this moment.

And thereby hangs a tale — of Pakistani and American perfidy. The US has been, and shall always remain mindful of the “paranoia of Pakistan”; Islamabad’s sensitivities, its faux victimhood, will always take precedence over Afghanistan in Washington.

Obama administration is already asking Pakistan to provide access to Afghan Taliban leaders safely ensconced under Pakistani ISI/Army's protection. A facade of peace deal as dictated by Pakistan will be reached with Afghan Taliban leaders chosen by Pakistan. US will begin its drawdown and finally exit the theater of a war it is desperate not to be seen as having lost, not so much to the Taliban and Al Qaeda as to the wily Generals of Rawalpindi who have proved to be smarter than the Americans.

That facade of peace will crumble within few years after the departure of US troops and Pakistan will bring Afghanistan under its suzerainty with reimposition of Taliban rule just as it did in 1996 while Uncle Sam will helplessly look the other way.

I've receded into apathy, since the discussion is so obviously designed to divert attention from the shrinkage of the empire.

Pakistan is being groomed for attack by the US, unilaterally. China will resist, first verbally, then with aid to Pakistan, then directly, by taking over Taiwan.

Doesn't anybody read Orwell anymore?

I don't care what you call it nor do I care what the world thinks about it. Withdrawal, retreat, defeat, it doesn't really matter.

We need to pull completely out of both Iraq and Afghanistan now and quit wasting U.S lives and money in those two countries.

For in the end, no matter what we do nor how many lives we sacrifice or dollars we waste in those two countries, in the end both countries will be ruled by Islamic extremists.

At this point in our history we need to begin to build our country again, upgrading the quality of our schools, our highway systems, our dams and the rest of our infrastructure.

We no longer have the money to squander on the countries that hate everything we stand for while taking us for everything they can get from us.

Let's start start acting like the rest of the world and putting the needs of our country first, and in second place as well, with the rest of the world in a distant third place..

Edward Chang Seward

I don't know why we are still stuck in all these wars. I thought Obama promised we would be done with these stupid wars, but instead now we are fighting three countries. Is it our fault that so many countries out there are awful?

We don't invade tons of other countries where they treat the citizens like garbage, so why not let the chips fall where they may for the people in these countries? We should just pull everyone out with the caveat that if there is another attack on America soil we will respond with a great deal of viciousness from the air.

Let them have their ugly countries as long as they stay our of ours.

The success in Afghanistan is a thing of perception. To create a democratic country with tanks and machine guns is a stretch for any imagination so I don't believe this will be how success is measured this time. As some of the other commentators have already pointed out, Afghanistan is a country combined from a number of nations, we can look at it as a potpourri catalog of people living in that region. And as any historian will tell you, different people actually can live in the same country, but they have to forget about their resentments that can go hundreds of years back and live there like equals. But the most important point is, they have to do so voluntarily, you can't make them (well, you can, but it won't last). So, I'm not really sure about the success of the Afghanistan saga.