President Obama must decide whether to send 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, as advised by General McChrystal, the commander of foreign forces. The debate has raised several critical questions.

"When you go into a war, you must have a clear exit strategy and what that exit strategy really means. It means you have to know either when you won the war and how to then bring it to an end and pull your forces out and declare victory in a meaningful way, or possibly when it’s no longer worth your while to continue fighting it and how then to get out," argues Professor Richard Billows, Professor of History at Columbia University.

Most of the critiques against America in the Middle East are centered on the uncertainty of the social and military goals of intervention.

As Prof. Billows states, "[in] one of our presently ongoing conflicts, our leader at the time declared in a grandstanding way, "Mission accomplished." I’m not sure even he then knew what that mission was. If it was accomplished, then it seems strange that many years on we are still engaged in that very same conflict."

The war in Afghanistan continues to make headlines, October marking the deadliest month in the war with at least 53 American soldiers killed.

Dr. Reinhard Erös argues that "[people], normal Pashtuns, who have bad experience with Western forces, with Western behavior, with Western influences, now they are taking their weapons. They are not in favor of these religious crazy people; they just want to defend their culture, their family values."

Prof. Billows also maintains that Afghans have "a very different culture than ours. The notion that one could simply oblige them to become like Americans and a reliable friend of America by just getting rid of the current regime was a non-starter, and any real rational debate, if there’s such a thing to be heard in America before starting that war, will surely have pointed that out and have tried to prevent us from going to war with such an unrealistic goal."

The president has been criticized for not making a decision about troop deployment. Citizens worry that if an announcement doesn’t come soon, Afghanistan will become the next Vietnam.

As Prof. Billows explains, "in trying to fight a war that was dedicated to the aim solely of claiming victory, what happened is that all sides lost, everybody lost, nobody won. And that’s the ultimate likely outcome of wars that are fought without having a clear sense of what we’re trying to achieve."