(CNN) -- Let's face it: Barack Obama has not exactly been the second coming of Alexander the Great. He swept into office vowing to step up the war effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and he did, sending 30,000 fresh troops into the former and vastly expanding drone strikes in the latter. Obama managed to get Osama bin Laden, an achievement will likely be hearing about ad nauseum on the campaign trail over the long months ahead. But he hasn't realized the much more difficult goal of bringing stability to Afghanistan, a land we have now been trying to stabilize for more than a decade. The recent spectacular attacks in Kabul, in which insurgents were able to once again paralyze the capital for 24 hours, may not have been Tet II, but they did underscore just how the fragile the planned 2014 handover to Afghan control really is.
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Blake Hounshell: Obama got bin Laden but hasn't brought stability to Afghanistan
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Enter Mitt Romney, he says, who denounces Obama but whose positions are all over the place
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He says Romney would do about same as Obama; Afghanistan is an intractable conflict
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Hounshell: U.S. will leave Afghanistan under Romney or Obama; not easy, but necessary
His main substantive complaint seems to be that @placeholder is withdrawing the surge troops by September instead of ... December.