This week will mark the eight-year anniversary of the war in Afghanistan, and the casualty rate is ticking upward. The United States lost eight troops in eastern Afghanistan on Saturday, lending more urgency to the debate over what the Obama administration's next steps will be in Afghanistan.

We talk to Andrew Bacevich, professor of International Relations and History at Boston University. He is author of "The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism"; and Marvin Weinbaum, a scholar at the Middle East Institute and a former State Department analyst on Afghanistan and Pakistan.