Today’s Politico Arena question is about what President Obama should say in his speech tonight about Afghanistan. My response:

If the president indeed withdraws 30,000 troops by the end of 2012, then we will still have about 70,000 troops in Afghanistan more than 11 years after the war began, and twice as many as President Bush deployed. If we can’t do whatever we want to do in 10 years, when will we achieve our purposes? U.S. troops have overthrown the Taliban and dispatched Osama bin Laden, and it’s time to end this war.

Tonight, on June 22, the president should pick up some language from another June speech and tell the nation, “Generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we ended a war.”

NOTE: See graphic here of the “incredible expanding Afghan war.”