The most (inadvertently) optimistic thing I’ve read in the past few days is this blog post by Andrew Sullivan:

Those of us who hoped for some kind of winding down of the longest war in US history will almost certainly be disappointed now. David Petraeus is the real Pope of counter-insurgency and if he decides that he needs more troops and more time and more resources in Afghanistan next year, who is going to be able to gainsay him? That’s Thomas P. Barnett’s shrewd assessment. Obama’s pledge to start withdrawing troops in 2011 is now kaput. It won’t happen. I doubt it will happen in a second term either. Once Washington has decided to occupy a country, it will occupy it for ever. We are still, remember, in Germany! But Afghanistan?

I hope Andrew is right — not because I or anyone else is in favor of perpetually occupying Afghanistan (talk about a straw man!) — but because the only way to prevail is to show the will to stay in the long run. Obama’s artificial deadline for departure encourages our enemies to wait us out and makes our friends and potential friends too nervous to do much to help us. Paradoxically, the longer we announce we are willing to stay, the faster our troops are likely to prevail and come home.