And for the Taliban that means that the time to enter Afghanistan to burn down schools that teach girls and otherwise harass the people of Afghanistan with threats and suicide bombings is here.
Yet all is not off to a good start for the jihadis this year:
The Taliban Spring offensive is off to a poor start partly because of growing disorder back in Pakistan. The Taliban bases there are in disorder because of feuding between Taliban and al Qaeda groups, as well as difficulty in recruiting young tribesmen for the war in Afghanistan. The young guys have noticed how few of last years recruits returned last Fall.
It is early yet, but the yammering about how Afghanistan is deterioriating (for five years now, I've been hearing Lefties claim we are ignoring Afghanistan and that it is about to collapse any minute now) seems wrong again.
I didn't think that it would be springtime for mullah Omar this year, even as requests for reinforcements for Afghanistan made it seem like we were in for a tough spring after last year's Taliban surge:
The enemy surged last spring and we made them pay for their efforts. We shall see if the enemy can surge again this year. And this year we are in an even better position to make the enemy pay for any attempts to disrupt Afghanistan.Yet consider that we did slaughter large numbers of them, which hasn't helped recruiting for this year.
And we went on a winter campaign to pursue the enemy rather than just wait for them to get ready in the spring. So we've not let them rest as much as they'd like.
And we've strengthened our operations on the border to catch the enemy coming across.
And the Pakistanis are committed to striking in the tribal areas where the Taliban are preparing. This should cut down on the number even trying to enter Afghanistan.
So with all these preparations that seem to indicate the Taliban will have trouble rivaling last spring's offensive, why would we need even more troops this spring?
