This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 30th, 2009.

I'm Caleb Brown.

Next week marks eight years since the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

So are we closer to success?

Or is success in Afghanistan as nebulous as Special Envoy Richard Holbrook's assertion

that we'll know it when we see it?

Malu innocent, a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute, spoke at a forum September 14, 2009.

This is the bulk of that speech.

I think in debates surrounding the war in Afghanistan, a view common among the political and military elite, is that if the United States

truly committed enough time and resources, possibly hundreds of thousands of troops

for another 12 to 14 years, Washington could really turn that country

around.

General Stanley McChrystal, who commanded Special Operations Forces in Iraq, and the summer

became the commander of U. of US military operations in Afghanistan.

He says he hopes to see an improvement on the ground with a fraction of those forces

in as little as 18 to 24 months.

However, there is a reason why the war in Afghanistan ranks at or near the bottom of

polls tracking issues important to the American public and why most Americans who do have

an opinion about the war oppose it and oppose sending more combat troops.

It's because Americans understand intuitively that the question about Afghanistan is not

about whether it's winnable, but whether it constitutes a vital national security interest.

An essential national debate about whether we should really double down in Afghanistan

...