Excerpts Obama's book : A Promised Land .... ::: -- Pak wanted to keep Afghan Govt weak, hedging against Kabul’s alignment with India

Obama's observations on the American engagement in Afghanistan in effect tells how probably, he and others in the White House knew what was coming in:

(excerpts...taken from different chapters and pages..) 

"Unlike the war in Iraq, the Afghan campaign had always seemed to me a war of necessity. 

Though the Taliban’s ambitions were confined to Afghanistan, their leadership remained loosely allied to al-Qaeda, and their return to power could result in the country once again serving as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the United States and its allies. "

Moreover, Pakistan had shown neither the capacity nor the will to dislodge al-Qaeda’s leadership from its current sanctuary in a remote, mountainous, and barely governed region straddling the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. 

This meant that our ability to pin down and ultimately destroy the terrorist network depended on the Afghan government’s willingness to let U.S. military and intelligence teams operate in its territory. 

The report’s added emphasis on Pakistan was key: Not only did the Pakistan military (and in particular its intelligence arm, ISI) tolerate the presence of Taliban headquarters and leadership in Quetta, near the Pakistani border, but it was also quietly assisting the Taliban as a means of keeping the Afghan government weak and hedging against Kabul’s potential alignment with Pakistan’s arch rival, India. 

That the U.S. government had long tolerated such behavior from a purported ally—supporting it with billions of dollars in military and economic aid despite its complicity with violent extremists and its record as a significant and irresponsible proliferator of nuclear weapons technology in the world—said something about the pretzel-like logic of U.S. foreign policy. 

The way the Bush administration had spun the intelligence to gain public support for invading Iraq (not to mention its use of terrorism as a political cudgel in the 2004 elections) was more damning. And, of course, I considered the invasion itself to be as big a strategic blunder as the slide into Vietnam had been decades earlier. 

But the actual wars in Afghanistan and Iraq hadn’t involved the indiscriminate bombing or deliberate targeting of civilians that had been a routine part of even “good” wars like World War II; and with glaring exceptions like Abu Ghraib, our troops in theater had displayed a remarkable level of discipline and professionalism. 

But barring significant reversals, the end of America’s war in Iraq was finally in sight. The same couldn’t be said about Afghanistan.

The additional troops I’d authorized in February had helped check Taliban gains in some areas and were working to secure the upcoming presidential election. But our forces had not reversed the country’s deepening cycle of violence and instability, and as a result of increased fighting over a wider swath of territory, U.S. casualties had spiked. 

Obama on Biden ::: 

".....only Joe Biden voiced his misgivings. He had traveled to Kabul on my behalf during the transition, and what he saw and heard on the trip—particularly during a contentious meeting with Karzai—had convinced him that we needed to rethink our entire approach to Afghanistan. 

I knew Joe also still felt burned by having supported the Iraq invasion years earlier. Whatever the mix of reasons, he saw Afghanistan as a dangerous quagmire and urged me to delay a deployment, suggesting it would be easier to put troops in once we had a clear strategy as opposed to trying to pull troops out after we’d made a mess with a bad one.