It's getting too horrible to watch: The deaths mount. The costs increase. Afghan troops are still not capable of fighting on their own. The government is corrupt.

And in Washington, the debate is not over whether we stay in Afghanistan or pull out but whether we should be more forceful - and callous - in our attacks.

To me, the most troubling news in Rolling Stone's article about General Stanley McChrystal wasn't what he and his aides said about the Obama administration. It was writer Michael Hasting's discussions with some of the US troops.

McChrystal has pushed for major changes in our "rules of engagement," emphasizing the need to avoid harming civilians. He limited air strikes and night raids and tightened the conditions under which troops can force their way into houses.

All of this is important: killing civilians is inhumane and drives Afghans into the arms of the Taliban.

We're walking a thin tightrope, though. We train our troops to kill, send them off to fight people who are determined to kill them, and then advise them to hold back.

Hastings and other reporters in Afghanistan say the policy has frustrated and angered some troops, who feel they've been put at risk.

"We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place," one private told Hastings. "You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?"

Well, we know the rationale: If we leave, Al Qaeda will find safe haven and spawn more terrorism. The Taliban will unite with Pakistani terrorists and get control of Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

Terrorism isn't our problem alone, though. Nor is the threat of nuclear weapons. Terrorism is an international problem, and it needs to be dealt with by a broad, truly international effort. (McChrystal may have been tactless when he disparaged our allies in Afghanistan, but the fact is, few other countries have joined us in the fighting. And some who have are preparing to leave.)

We are fighting a fight that we can not win. And it is costing us not only precious lives but the nation's financial health. Some Democrats in Congress are pushing back, trying to withhold funding for the war. That, of course, is dangerous politically; Republicans would like nothing better than to accuse Democrats of endangering the troops.

Nor are Republicans unhappy that war is sucking up funds we need at home; that is surely one of the reasons we didn't raise taxes to pay for the fighting.

We're also losing lives and spending money in Iraq. There, we're supposed to end our fighting in August. But 50,000 troops will stay. And after the draw-down, the Times reported recently: "What soldiers today would call combat operations - hunting insurgents, joint raids between Iraqi security forces and United States Special Forces to kill or arrest militants - will be called ‘stability operations.'"

We're supposed to pull out all of our troops by the end of next year. But, says the Times, military experts, diplomats, and Iraqi officials believe that once a new Iraq government is in place, "talks will begin about a longer-term American troop presence."

The Times' Bob Herbert points a finger at all of us. "If we don't have the courage as a people to fight and share in the sacrifices when our nation is at war," he wrote last month, "if we're unwilling to seriously think about the war and hold our leaders accountable, if we're not even willing to pay for it, then we should at least have the courage to pull our valiant forces out of it."