Nice speech, Mr. President.
Now explain to me why, when committing 30,000 more Americans to this endless debacle in Afghanistan, you aren’t asking those of us who are not in the military to make some real sacrifices. You invoked the noble acts of some of your predecessors, but they were not reluctant to ask for the able-bodied to serve (even if many had “other priorities”) or the relatively well-heeled to pay more taxes. Why are you so reluctant? Don’t feel as though I’m singling you out. I could, of course, ask this question of George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, and the sainted Ronald Reagan with equal justice. The difference, I believe, is that you are probably brighter and more worldly than any of them. I know what their excuses would have been. What is yours?
Explain, also, why it is so much more urgent to keep Al Qaeda, violent extremists, the Taliban, etc., from taking hold in Afghanistan than in, say, Jordan or Syria, where literally hundreds of thousands of Iraqi refugees are living in squalor, driven from homes they will likely never see again. You and your advisors seem eager to draw dubious lessons from Bush’s “surge” in Iraq, but not so eager to consider the broader implications of massive land army invasions of foreign lands and the misery they generate. If we’re going to pour resources into preventing extremism in the Muslim world, it might be a good idea to start where we’ve made the biggest mess and spend some serious cash on helping those people whose world we turned inside-out (admittedly prior to your tenure) instead of investing in similar mayhem directed at others. Remember – Al Qaeda is more than just a group; it’s a brand, and one that can easily be emulated by disaffected and disenfranchised people anywhere.
You have said that this will not be an “open-ended commitment” to defending the Afghan government. That’s all well and good, but how do we determine when, in the cold light of failure, it is time to leave? 
Indeed, we do not even seem to be aware of how self-defeating our efforts in Afghanistan truly are. An article by Aram Roston in The Nation described how our practice of contracting out logistical operations is providing a substantial revenue stream for the Taliban. For safe passage through hostile territory, contractors are paying protection money, in essence, to the insurgents. Roston writes:
US military officials in Kabul estimate that a minimum of 10 percent of the Pentagon’s logistics contracts–hundreds of millions of dollars–consists of payments to insurgents.
Now, I’m not a Pentagon analyst, but last time I looked, the Taliban was not a resource-intensive organization like the U.S. military. “Hundreds of millions of dollars” is likely still a lot of money in their world of warcraft. If the claims of these U.S. military officials are even partly true, it sounds to me like we may be underwriting something close to the total cost of Mullah Omar’s war effort. Is your plan going to address this? Wouldn’t it make more sense just to deny them those funds, rather than pour more lives and money into this rathole?
Isn’t this an enormous mistake, Mr. President? Just askin’.
luv u,
jp
