Deadlines Focus the Mind

Excellent point by Andrew Sullivan with regard to President Obama's insistence on a time limit for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan:

"That time-line the GOP hawksters are decrying: it seems to have jolted Afghanistan's leadership into less complacency.

One weird contradiction in current conservative thought. Isn't an open-ended commitment of arms and money and troops to a weak foreign country a dangerous form of dependency-generating welfare?

If we can have welfare reform domestically, why can we not have it internationally?"