Why closure of Kyrgyzstan air base is point of no return for Afghan war

When President Barack Obama announced that fewer than 10,000 US troops would remain in Afghanistan beyond the end of this year (and that depending on the permission of the next Afghan president) and that all troops would be gone by 2017, his decision was attacked in various corners as a retreat, a failure, a gift to the Taliban.

The Washington Post editorial page decried the decision as "cutting and running." Republican Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham attacked the timetable as a "monumental mistake and a triumph of politics over strategy."

What the criticism often ignores is that if vast numbers of foreign troops in Afghanistan – NATO had 140,000 troops there as recently as 2011 – haven't been able to defeat the insurgency, it's hard to see what 10,000 or so, with a mission limited to training and counterterrorism, would be expected to accomplish if they stayed indefinitely.

But a piece of news this week also shows that even if a larger and longer deployment was being considered, it's just grown much more expensive and difficult. Nearly impossible, in fact, unless there's a major geopolitical shift.

http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Security-Watch/Backchannels/2014/0605/Why-closure-of-Kyrgyzstan-air-base-is-point-of-no-return-for-Afghan-war