For the past 8 years, the moral authority of the mission has been eroded by mounting civilian casualties and the gradual deterioration of what little social order Afghanistan had. Eight years of failing to progress has lead to the idea that occupation forces either aren't capable of bringing order, or aren't interested in it.

External to Afghanistan, the moral authority of the USA has been eroded by an aggressive war launched with an excuse that most of the world regarded as flimsy at best and deceitful at worst. Further damage has been dealt by human rights violations in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and rendition programs to secret prisons around the world. This horrible PR didn't just undermine efforts to win over innocent civilians throughout the region, it provided groups like the Taliban with an ample supply of angry young men eager to overthrow Western oppression.

Life under the Taliban sucked, but it was stable. The people of Afghanistan and the world community were willing to give us a chance when we kicked the Taliban out, but we failed to even maintain order as well as the Taliban had, let alone improve the prosperity of the average Afghan. The chance is gone. Iraq, torture programs, and incompetent governance have burned up whatever trust these people could ever give us.

Actually, polls show that the vast majority of Afghanistan would still perfer the Taliban not coming back.

I've seen such polls, but the fact is that every year the Taliban gets stronger and stronger. Part of that strength is driven by Islamists from Pakistan and other foreign countries trying to fight their holy war, and part of it is driven by the people of Afghanistan. One of the many interesting findings in this report is that 56% of Afghans have sympathies with armed opposition groups:

http://asiafoundation.org/publications/pdf/630

It's not all bad news in there, it just seems to me that the challenges have been getting bigger in the past eight years rather than smaller, and the available resources have dried up after an economic crisis, almost a decade of war fatigue, and mounting human rights scandals.

Iraq could have been so much better.

But some retard though it be better to disband half a million strong army and let them keep their weapons. Some retard though it be good to take away the only way for them to make a living and take it away. Take away the only support much of their family ever had. Mothers fathers sisters brothers kids all lost their only income.

This is the answer I expected. 100% political, and 0% tactical.

Everything you stated, has nothing to do with if we can win or not. We could not win then, and we can not win now.

If there ever was a path to victory, it's still there. We are the same military, they are the same Taliban, and that part of the world has the same outlook they always had.

Oh, and polls in that part of the country is almost worthless. They are collections of independent tribes. What one group of people think has nothing to do with what people 50 miles away think.

That's because assymetric wars are 100% political. Our tactical superiority is not in dispute, but a tactical victory over ideas like this would require a level of brutality and violence that no modern democracy could stomach. The only way to win is to persuade your enemy that fighting is no longer in his best interest.

We can't kill all their people, so we have to kill their ideas.

Going after the poppy farmers was the biggest mistake of the Afghan war in my opinion. Drugs are Afghanistan's biggest export. The rural farmers had no option but turn to the Taliban if the coalition are destroying their livelihood. We should have offered them a higher rate and turned it into morphine.

I am not understanding why this decision took 3 months to make.

I could understand a decision taking 3 months if it was in disagreement with the generals in Afghanistan - that is, to reject the surge and withdraw immediately.

Very strange Mr. Obama, very strange.

I think a lot of it comes down to the election as to whether it was worth supporting the government or not.