Sending more U.S. forces to Afghanistan is an idea whose time has come. The question is whether the time when it could work has already gone.

President-elect Barack Obama, departing President George W. Bush and holdover Defense Secretary Robert Gates have backed a plan to send 20,000 or more troops next year. Those forces must confront an increasingly entrenched Taliban enemy and a population grown hostile to foreign troops after seven years of U.S.-led warfare.

“We may have missed the golden moment there,” said Lawrence Korb, a former Pentagon official who has long advocated an increased U.S. focus on Afghanistan.

The tension between the short-run need for more muscle to thwart the Taliban and the long-term trap of becoming the latest in a long line of foreign intruders bogged down in Afghanistan forms the core of the dilemma confronting Obama.

The new U.S. troops will likely be used to strike hard at Taliban insurgents and attempt to halt their momentum, said retired Army General Jack Keane, who helped plan a similar U.S. buildup in Iraq two years ago.

There is a real possibility that the US could get bogged down in the country just as bad as the USSR had 15 years ago.  The US is doing the same things the Sovietsa did–throw more troops and equiupment into the country–did not work for them and will not work of us.