This "analysis" is just depressing:
With conditions on the ground worsening by nearly every yardstick last year -- including record levels of extremist attacks and U.S. casualties, and the expansion of the conflict across Pakistan and into India -- Obama's campaign pledge to "finish the job" in Afghanistan with more troops, money and diplomacy has encountered the daunting reality of a job that has barely begun.
I know every reporter says we are losing in Afghansitan, but this is the proof? Extremist attacks are up, but overall casualties are about the same. This is the result of al Qaeda refugees from Iraq coming to Afghanistan. This increase in attack statistics is also a function of more US troops hunting Taliban thugs. There are more opportunities for combat with more US troops in the field being used more aggressively. U.S casualties are also a function of more of our troops being used more aggressively, more than enemy advances. With triple the troop strength over what we had in the first several years, wouldn't you expect more American casualties?
The argument that a sign of defeat is that the conflict expanding into Pakistan and India is foolish. Those conflicts predated our war in Afghanistan.
As for a job barely begun, I think we're doing fine inside Afghanistan. The enemy is not using Afghan territory to plot assaults on the West and our enemies are in no position to take over the country.
Of course, this might account for some of the confusion:
A National Intelligence Estimate warned that a reconstituted al-Qaeda leadership, dug into the mountains along the Afghan-Pakistani border, continues to plan attacks against the United States and Europe.
Well you see, there's a source of confusion right there. If al Qaeda leadership was truly even partly in Afghanistan, we'd be on them like ugly on an ape. But that mythical place "along the Afghan-Pakistan border" does not exist. Al Qaeda is hiding inside Pakistan. Which is beyond even the most comprehensive plan for the war in Afghanistan that anybody in the Obama entourage can come up with. I don't care how nuanced they are, this is the basic problem we've faced.
The story correctly notes that we have to figure out what our objective is for Afghanistan. With more troops heading for the place, I want to make sure we have a real strategy. Unnamed sources think we never had one:
"We have no strategic plan. We never had one," a senior U.S. military commander said of the Bush years. Obama's first order of business, he said, will be to "explain to the American people what the mission is" in Afghanistan.
Let me provide a hint. While we focused on the main fight against al Qaeda in Iraq, all we wanted to do in Afghansitan was keep al Qaeda from launching an attack on us from Afghanistan. We've done that and even a little more.
Thankfully, Obama's big-brained nuanced strategists will save us by defining our mission:
The president-elect set out a "very limited" objective of ensuring that Afghanistan "cannot be used as a base to launch attacks against the United States."
Oh. Then never mind. I guess we have known our mission all along. That mission will continue.
But the real difference is that the new and improved American foreign policy will get allies to flock to our banner!
The parameters of a new strategy are unlikely to emerge before early April, when Afghanistan and Pakistan will top the agenda at a NATO summit in France. By presenting its NATO allies with a comprehensive plan and demonstrating the leadership to implement it, Obama hopes to capitalize on his overwhelming popularity in Europe with requests for increased military and financial contributions.
"What they've got to say is 'Okay, if you love Obama, show us how much,' " said another retired senior military officer.
So if we've been fighting for what Obama wants to achieve all along, how well will Obama's hope of getting NATO help go? I'm going to step out on a limb here and predict our allies won't be showing the love in any meaningful way. Remember, they don't think Afghanistan is the "good" war.
Brace for it people. The idiots who know nothing of history or war who reported from the Green Zone are instead going to be reporting from Kabul.
I'm feeling nauseous already.
