Does this look like a country getting ready to leave Afghanistan?

Troops here told me of shepherd boys scowling their way around Bagram’s outskirts, slingshotting off the occasional rock in hopes of braining an American. Again, something else I wouldn’t have believed two years ago.

By next year, the detention facility that’s spirited away on a far corner of Bagram is supposed to revert to Afghan control. And maybe someday the Afghan National Army will inherit the entire base.

But two years ago there were about 18,000 troops and contractors living here. Now that figure is north of 30,000, all for a logistics hub and command post that the United States didn’t ever imagine possessing before 9/11.

In 2011, the U.S. military probably won’t be thinking about turning over the keys to a new, huge base. It’ll be thinking about how it can finish up the construction contracts it signed months ago -– if not some it’s yet to ink.