Robert Grenier, a former CIA station chief in Pakistan, can envision only breakdown in Afghanistan: Congress has divergent goals and counter-insurgency tactics are insufficient. “For the Democrats, a firm date for a rapid and sustained US withdrawal, and an assumption of responsibility by Afghan security forces in the service of US interests; and for the Republicans, an events-based process in which lack of progress will be met by continued US engagement and resolve. In this environment, Petraeus, as the author and champion of current US counter-insurgency (COIN) doctrine, will have the unenviable task of turning his words – which have taken on the aura of holy writ – into hard facts on the ground, under the leadership of a president who has made plain that he will invest neither the time nor the resources which COIN will inevitably demand. The situation is, simply, unsustainable.”