Afghanistan troops

The big debate on Afghanistan at the moment is whether the US should send more troops. The military, led by General McChrystal, wants more, up to 45,000 new troops on top of the 68,000 already approved. He outlined his plans and ideas in this unclassified assessment published by the Washington Post.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, the review on Afghanistan involved a dozen of the usual pro-war think tankers like the Kagans, someone from RAND, etc.
There are however some officials in Obama's administration that are are reluctant to send more troops.
The British military also wants more troops, 1,000 to 2,000.
This debate is typical of mainstream debates on the war. Note that the two options we can choose here are only "more troops" or "not more troops"--the options of "less troops" or "withdrawal" are not part of the debate.
This is reflected in the mainstream media as well. So the New York Times has asked six "experts" on Afghanistan the following questions:
"How should additional troops be deployed? What types of specialized personnel are needed now?"
So the questions assume that we can only send more troops.
Many of the answers are pretty much empty bla bla and/or general statements that could be said of basically any topic.