So maybe it wasnt the centerpiece, but it was a very important part of his foreign policy credentials...

He had good judgement on Afghanistan, which was evidenced by his opposition to the Iraq war, and he was going to use that good judgement to focus on Afghanistan.  That was a very big argument, specially during the primary...but also during the general.

ANd so, yes...he cannot just pull out of Afghanistan without paying some price for it politically.  I also understand that the polls are turning against the mission, so the price may be small...but it will be a price.

I am in general support of your broader thesis that the US mission in Afghanistan is not doing too well, and needs to be rethunk.  If the US is going to stay, then I would like to see a shifting of focus... absent that, I would rather see a pullout than the current drift.

However, one cannot just wish for something without acknowledging the price.

You can make the argument that the 9-11 hijackers were trained in Europe, and al Quaeda isnt there anymore.  Those are all valid points.  I am also sure that those arguments will quickly get lost.

From testimony before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

If the Taliban did come back to power in Afghanistan, of course they would give safe haven to al Qaeda. Despite all the pressures military and otherwise exerted on them over the past decade, giving safe haven to al Qaeda has been at the heart of the Taliban project; first in the five years before 9/11 when they ran Afghanistan, and since then in the areas of Pakistan's tribal regions that they now control. Taliban leader Mullah Omar was prepared to lose everything on the point of principle that he would not give up Osama bin Laden after the 9/11 attacks. And he did lose everything: after 9/11, the Taliban were swiftly removed from power by U.S. forces. This does not suggest a talent for realpolitik. Foreign policy "realists" often take the view that everyone else is also a realistic and rational as they are, but history does not provide much comfort in this matter.

In a speech in August, President Obama laid out the rationale for stepping up the fight in Afghanistan: "If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people." Obama's `Af-Pak' plan is, in essence, a counter-sanctuary strategy that denies safe havens to the Taliban and al Qaeda, with the overriding goal of making America and its allies safer.

This is a sound policy. If U.S. forces were not in Afghanistan, the Taliban, with its al Qaeda allies in tow, would seize control of the country's south and east and might even take it over entirely. A senior Afghan politician told me that the Taliban would be in Kabul within 24 hours without the presence of international forces. This is not because the Taliban is so strong; generous estimates suggest it numbers no more than 20,000 fighters. It is because the Afghan government and the 90,000-man Afghan army are still so weak.

Peter Bergen - Confronting al Qaeda: Understanding the Threat in Afghanistan and Beyond New America Foundation 7 Oct 09

This notion that since al Qaeda attacked New York from a cell in Hamburg that Afghanistan and Pakistan are not central to their operations or objectives strikes me as fallacious.

I didn't suggest that Kashmir be 'handed over' to Pakistan.  As you point out is an unresolved issue, not a forgone conclusion.  And not an easy one, to be sure.

Having said that, however, I don't see that there is a deeper enmity between Pakistan and India which an equitable settlement, a relaxation of military tension and a few good years of mutually beneficial trade couldn't resolve.

You seem to accept that an unstable Pakistan is not in India's best interest.  Perhaps a stable and prosperous Pakistan would be a benefit.  Without going into the pre-partition history, with which I am passably familiar, or even the countless mutual injuries and outrages which remain unresolved since, it seems to me that it is the interests of both nations to move on and leave their respective fundamentalist idealogues behind.  Surely India must consider her conflict with Pakistan as a restriction on her economic development, a burden on her revenues and a threat to her citizens.

The crux of Mearsheimer's argument, it seems to me, is as follows:

The Republicans and General McChrystal claim that it is absolutely necessary to win the war in Afghanistan for the simple reason that a Taliban victory will allow al Qaeda to re-establish a sanctuary in Afghanistan. And we all know what happened the last time Osama bin Laden was free to scheme and plot against the United States from Afghanistan: September 11. The fatal flaw in this argument is that al Qaeda has a sanctuary next door in Pakistan from which it has been operating since it was driven out of Afghanistan in Dec. 2001. It does not need a sanctuary in Afghanistan.

[...]

But what if the Pakistani army eliminates al Qaeda's sanctuary in western Pakistan? Isn't its current offensive in South Waziristan a major step toward that end? Unfortunately, no. Pakistan has no intention of rolling up al Qaeda, in good part because it does not have the capability to police those areas where the terrorists are hiding.  The offensive in South Waziristan is not even aimed at the Afghan Taliban, much less at al Qaeda. This means that al Qaeda will have a sanctuary in Pakistan no matter what happens in Afghanistan, which means that the American military cannot win a meaningful victory there.

[...]

The United States should accept defeat and immediately begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.

John J Mearsheimer Hollow Victory Foreign Policy 2 Nov 09

Two years ago this argument would have been arguably sound, ironically, just around the time Obama was running on the 'good' war.  But since then there has been a sea change in Pakistan regarding their ambivalence toward the Pashtun militants operating from the FATA and NWFP.  I don't see the contemporary evidence for Mearsheimer's assertion that Pakistan has 'no intention of rolling up al Qaeda.'  Things have changed.  The constitutional crisis surrounding the dismissal of Supreme Justice Chaudhry, Bhutto's assassination and Musharraf's resignation, not to mention the horrific acts of indiscriminate domestic terrorism only recently, have had a significant impact on public opinion, the political framework and the aims, operations and allegiences of the Pakistani state.  With the rise of domestic terrorist attacks and the concerns about a spreading Pashtun insurgency, dismantling the al Qaeda network in Pakistan strikes me as a matter of survival for the ruling elites we all acknowledge are running the show there.

The recent operation in South Waziristan, which Mearsheimer dismisses, does involve the kind of tacit alliances with Taliban groups which have been problematic in the past:

In the time-honored tradition of the mercurial relationships in the tribal areas, the military has sealed alliances with two Taliban commanders of the Waziri tribe, winning deals that they would not attack the army on their southern and eastern flanks.

The two Waziri commanders, Maulvi Nazir and Hafiz Gul Bahadar, control territory that surrounds the lands that are home to the rival Mehsuds and that form the Taliban stronghold where the army has begun its push.

It is an expediency that may serve the Pakistani Army, but that could work against American forces in Afghanistan. Both Mr. Nazir and Mr. Bahadar are allied with Sirajuddin Haqqani, who along with his father, Jalaluddin, runs a good part of the insurgency battling American and NATO forces over the border in Afghanistan.

Jane Perlez - Pakistan Finds Local Allies Against Ferocious Foe NYT 20 Oct 09

However it doesn't follow to me that 'this means that al Qaeda will have a sanctuary in Pakistan no matter what happens in Afghanistan' as Mearsheimer asserts.  It just means it will take a little more time.  The Pakistani military were equally concerned that as their Rah-i-Nijat offensive was beginning US forces apparently pulled back from border outposts on the Afghanistan frontier.  This is why I think this whole issue needs to be carefully considered, there is a lot of conflicting evidence and a subtly changing political landscape in the region.

I totally agree with Mearsheimer on one point, however, that the Afghanistan and Pakistan regions must be dealt with as a whole.  And that is the crux of my argument, that abandoning Afghanistan at this point would likely throw Pakistan into a flat spin from which they are unlikely to recover in time.