This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Thursday, March 15, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's been stunning to watch the rapid shift in opinions on Afghanistan

long after the public soured on the mission,

Republicans running for president

now seem to recognize that turning against it

at least is no longer a net loss politically.

Malu innocent foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute comments.

To witness the last month or so in our adventure in Afghanistan would be to watch a pretty incredible turnaround,

both in sort of just under the surface tensions breaking out

and in a bunch of prominent Republicans some might call

conservatives turning around and making some pretty dramatically different statements about their view of the US mission in Afghanistan

than they had held for the previous decade.

Yeah, I think you're right in terms of just the series of events that we've been seen in Afghanistan over the past several months

Arguably since oh eight.

Oh nine, but really just in the past several months

There's just been a rapid deterioration of the mission in terms of the long-term

strategy of creating a government in Kabul that has the monopoly on the use of force throughout the country in terms of in the underlying problem with the mission in terms of what do we hope to achieve, do we have

the resources to achieve it, and will we be willing to change course if we don't see those

gains? It doesn't appear as if the Obama administration is

willing to change course, at least for now. There could be another event that

further unravels this conflict and you know further jeopardizes the mission.

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