'We're not going to win this war' By China Hand

The US is going to be in Afghanistan for years to come. The only thing that's going to change in Afghanistan is the objectives. The Afghan adventure is expensive, onerous, and unpopular, and most of the 40 or so countries participating in the International Security Assistance Force and the host of NGOs trying to better the lives of the downtrodden Afghani people would like to see a new policy. Specifically, one that separates the existential goal of crushing al-Qaeda from the strictly local issue of what political grouping gets to run the failed state of Afghanistan, and tries to slice and dice and co-opt the insurgency instead of pursuing the impossible goal of crushing the Taliban's entrenched power in Afghanistan's mountains and countryside.