The curse of the Afghanistan War Timetable

From Spiked:

... everything was running according to the Afghanistan War Timetable, that strangely unreal schedule for this hitherto intractable conflict dreamt up in the White House just under two years ago.
[...]
...when the war being fought has so little to do with any strategic or material interest in the country in which it is being conducted, it is hardly a great surprise that domestic concerns rule the day. And so it is with the war in Afghanistan, a war so arbitrary in its objectives that its length and intensity can be governed by a timetable drawn up in a backroom in the White House.

Meanwhile, we learn that the "option" Obama "picked" was never "on the table." In other words, he made a decision outside of the options.