What made anyone think that it would be ok to continue sacrificing American lives and money on a lost cause?
Bush fired all the generals that disagreed with COIN, and Obama was left with a bunch of generals that are willing to lie about the future of Afghanistan. :\
Obama never was a military guy, never pretended to be. The arrogance of our military leadership extends across party lines. It would have been very difficult if not impossible for him to find anybody in the top brass who would have agreed with what you said.
They think it's always possible to win with more tech, more guns, more troops, more tanks, more artillery, more airstrikes. And they're probably right, except for the fact that America doesn't have the stomach for the kind of mass murder required to pacify Afghanistan.
We'd also have to do the same in the tribal areas of Pakistan, as well.
The surge appeared to have worked in Iraq, and it seemed to be the best of the possibilities they laid out wrt Afghanistan. It remains to be seen what will finally happen, but none of the people at the top on either side of the political divide want to see us pull out in a way where we'll take lead in our ass doing so, or where the Karzai govt will fall faster than we can get out.
2 years or so into it, the Bush Admin should have declared victory & departed, before the opposition had time to regroup. They deliberately held on in Afghanistan because it was too big a cash cow for their pals to let it go, and because it served to beat the Terrarist Threat drum over and over again in this country.