It's not about being here or there, it's about getting Bin Laden, which Obama has said he will do. After that, and I don't care how it's done, GTFO!
Obama will do the right thing, which is draw troops from Iraq, and then use them to stabilize Afghanistan. Right now the same shit is going on in Afghanistan as was going on in Iraq a few years ago. You can not win a war with predator drones and no boots on the ground. It didn't work in Iraq, it's not going to work in Afghanistan.
It doesn't mean that. "Staying" implies doing little or nothing. Without the direct intervention of Bush, we would have accomplished this in 2004. He's 1 guy, an old guy at that, in a wide open area in which we can track any movement by satellite. If it means we divert 140,000 troops from Iraq and march across every inch of Afganistan until we find and kill him, I'm fine with that. Then GTFO!
I think we have wasted a lot of time in Afganistan. While we're hunting the Taliban and Bin Laden, why haven't we been destroying the thousands of Acres of Opium plants that have killed many more people around the globe than the Taliban. I'm all for slaughtering as man Tali's and Al Queda, but we could be doing the world a much bigger favor by wiping out the Poppy fields.
Opium is a marvelously effective substance that is used in many, many analgesic drugs around the world. All attempts to make safer, less-addictive synthetic varieties have failed miserably and have often resulted in less effective, more addictive substitutes, most of which are excessively harmful to your liver, kidneys and heart. It is the main source of income for most farmers in several regions of the world. Eradication is no more realistic than is eradication of Marijuana, and a war on drugs has proven from Day 1 to only INCREASE production by driving up the price. In Afganistan it would drive the farmers to join the Taliban against the "evil US who destroys our livelihood". Let's just cap Bin Laden and GTFO!
Well, when you put it like that, we should all just grow opium in are vegetable gardens. It is the opium trade that has financed the Taliban for years. Where else have they been getting money? Rock farming.