Michael O'Hanlon's mindless optimism about Afghanistan

Says Brookings think-tanker O' Hanlon, it's all about staying the course. . . and about numbers: more US troops in Afghanistan, more trainers arriving for Afghan police and military. all of the supposedly unheralded slow progress.  The man is straining to the point of herniating himself to identify nuggets of "success." - reasons to keep on keeping on in Afghanistan, even when the vast majority of realistic experts judge that there is in fact very little reason to believe that "victory" is in the cards, and that any kind of "success" that's to be had will come only if the bar is lowered to something you might see in a limbo dance.

Meanwhile, as the LA Times reports, Iraqi officials (and some Americans as well) sense that the growing US commitment in Afghanistan has sucked all of the US's energy out of whatever commitment it may still have to Iraq - where the situation is, by the way, anything but stable or pacified.