What does a "win" look like in Afghanistan?

Gorbachev Says Obama Should Start Afghan Withdrawal

Excerpt:

President Mikhail Gorbachev, drawing on his experience of military failure in Afghanistan in the 1980s, said the U.S. can’t win the conflict there and should begin pulling out its soldiers.

Afghanistan, where U.S. and NATO forces are battling a Taliban-led insurgency, is too fragmented between clans to be controlled militarily, Gorbachev, 78, said in an interview today in Berlin. While he said President Barack Obama would be unlikely to take his advice, Gorbachev said he saw no chance of success even with more U.S. troops.

“I believe that there is no prospect of a military solution,” Gorbachev said in Russian through a translator. “What we need is the reconciliation of Afghan society -- and they should be preparing the ground for withdrawal rather than additional troops.”

Comment: It seems that (and I am not blaming President Obama for this!) that whenever leadership uses the military option, that there is rarely a definition of what "success" looks like. And rarely a plan to get out. Our middle son served 6 years in the Marines and now is in the Army National guard. I am encouraging him to get out before his unit is deployed to Afghanistan.