Quote Originally Posted by Entropy View Post
BW,

In my judgment option 1 in a pipedream and option 2 is not yet acceptable to a domestic political establishment that wants to avoid the political consequences of "losing" in Afghanistan. That is, admittedly, a cynical view, but these are cynical times.
No more a pipedream than offered by our current approaches; only at a fraction of the cost and actually directed at the root causes rather slapping than away at the symptoms...

Strategic thinking should not be constrained by budget, policy, doctrine or degree of difficulty. There are plenty of folk in the chain of command who will slap all of those constraints into place. Start off as smart as possible and let such "realities" dumb it down. If one starts off stupid however it only gets dumber from there, and then the full onus is placed on the operators on the ground to somehow turn crapola into shinola. We owe those guys better. Way better. We owe the American people and those people we impact abroad (both allies and host nation) as well.