The future of the Afghanistan war

On this date it is being reported that President Obama is "finalizing" his plans for the promised drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.

I'll hazard some predictions:

First of all, the best decision would be to simply get out as quickly as good order permits, but it isn't going to happen. This is the easy prediction.

The withdraws will be gradual, about in line with what SecDef Gates and Gen. Petreaus can tolerate although Petreaus especially will let it be known he would prefer to put off withdraws altogether until the end of the summer fighting season, (and then review the situation again).

By this time next year the military will be reporting that the "fragile gains" have, in fact, been lost, although it was never clear what the gains were to being with.

Obama will then agree to another surge.

The truth is that there was never and could never have been enough troops to successfully execute the general's grand COIN strategy -- Afghanistan is simply too tough a situation. Obama, however, will take the blame for not sending in enough troops and keeping them there.