This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, June 12, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

President Obama called Afghanistan the Good War, now a bipartisan group of lawmakers want to bring it to a close much faster than the

president does. After 11 years hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of

American lives and still no clear end game, our military continues to attempt to bring security and

prosperity to a country that has rarely had either in many hundreds of years.

Malu innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute comments.

Several members of Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, are working toward

quickening our exit from Afghanistan, what is inspiring them to do so in recent months?

Well, this is a deeply unpopular conflict.

The United States has spent over $500 billion over the past 11 years

with no appreciable enduring long-term benefit for the Afghan people.

And when you look at really sort of US and NATO presence on the ground,

you know, we've been tripling the number of US forces,

we've increased the number of air strikes, drone strikes, nighttime

raids, and when we have captured a number of Taliban operatives, a number of

shadow governors, mid-level commanders, weapons facilitators, the Taliban still

have an upper hand.

In fact, just in January, the NATO came out with a classified report that found that the

Taliban strength and motivation still remains intact.

And that was also buttressed by findings by the heads of the Senate and House committees

intelligence committees that found that the Taliban is stronger today than it was before the surge.

So despite all of the increase in terms of our funding the war still remains problematic and really unwindable.

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