He gets this right, and while self-evident to many conservatives, he takes the time to explain, presumably for the benefit of his liberal friends, that this isn’t Vietnam. We were attacked, after all, by al-Qaeda. Well, yes, and we forget that others forget. He also says we can’t maintain the status quo — that’s what we’ve been doing. And then he takes a swipe at the “nation-building” and “endless war” crowd (they are out there, I suppose). And it is here where he sounds the least convincing and the most defensive:

Finally, there are those who oppose identifying a time frame for our transition to Afghan responsibility. Indeed, some call for a more dramatic and open-ended escalation of our war effort – one that would commit us to a nation building project of up to a decade.

I reject this course because it sets goals that are beyond what we can achieve at a reasonable cost, and what we need to achieve to secure our interests. Furthermore, the absence of a timeframe for transition would deny us any sense of urgency in working with the Afghan government. It must be clear that Afghans will have to take responsibility for their security, and that America has no interest in fighting an endless war in Afghanistan.

Yet, he really hasn’t set a time for ending the war. He’s not saying we will bug out at a date certain. So he dislikes the sound of open-endedness, it seems. And again one wonders why he feels compelled to explain that we won’t be in this for as long as is needed to win. It must be because he has other things to do. And indeed he does, with this stark admission:

Our prosperity provides a foundation for our power. It pays for our military. It underwrites our diplomacy. It taps the potential of our people, and allows investment in new industry. And it will allow us to compete in this century as successfully as we did in the last. That is why our troop commitment in Afghanistan cannot be open-ended – because the nation that I am most interested in building is our own.

Well, at least he’s honest on that score.