Next quagmire

Re “Urgent shift in works on Afghanistan,” Dec. 23

Afghanistan may become Barack Obama’s Iraq. This unsettling thought, buoyed by the siren song of the outgoing administration and the military’s thoughtless need to “apply a tourniquet of some kind,” has great capacity to drag the U.S. into another quagmire.

How many soldiers do we need to lose to prove what the Russians found out after close to 10 fruitless years in Afghanistan? Does our need for vengeance now extend to an unending war to capture a man like Osama bin Laden?

Ralph Mitchell

Monterey Park