John McCain loves the idea of sending more troops to Afghanistan but he thinks that putting a time limit on our troop buildup is a mistake. Unless we are ready to stay forever it sends a signal to our enemies that they can just wait us out.

Here it appears that John McCain is a good revolutionary romantic and believes that our enemies are capable of fighting forever. See two posts previous for Wonks Anonymous views on this.

He also appears to believe that our enemies are the main problem. Maybe the time limit is a signal to our friends. These would be the folks who have had the our open handed support for these many years and have yet failed to make any progress.

The surge in Iraq had no explicit time limit but everyone knew that it could only last about a year. After that we would run out of troops. The intervention in Vietnam was open ended which told our allies that if they never got their act together we would keep sending massive economic aid and more troops.

Why get your act together when you can live well on welfare?

The Taliban are not that tough or popular. They won't last. Our allies are quite lazy, corrupt and incompetent. They could keep us in Afghanistan forever.