Yes, the Afghan Taliban are more active, but they aren't about to defeat the government even as we haven't been able to eliminate them. Part of the increased jihadi strength derives from Pakistan's loss of the tribal areas after 2006 to their Taliban which allows the tribal areas to be a rear area for supporting and reinforcing Afghanistan's Taliban. Another part is from the defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, allowing al Qaeda to focus on Pakistan and Afghanistan since fall 2007.
One argument that we are losing is that our casualties are higher now. But that ignores that we have a lot more troops in action now:
By the end of the year, there will be 57,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan. This is compared to 17,000 at the end of 2008 and only about 11,000 in 2006-7. Before that, U.S. forces had gone from 2,500 at the end of 2001, to 18,000 at the end of 2005.
I thought we were heading to 68,000 by the end of the year, but the trend is still clear. Aside from what the enemy is doing, just having more troops rolling around the countryside will mean more casualties. We've added more troops over the years yet I'm not convinced we need to do this to achieve our essential objectives.
The bottom line is that I'm at least sympathetic to expressions of sheer doom for the war, as that author asserts.
All I want to do is keep Afghanistan from being a haven for terrorists who might attack us and help them build a decent confederation that relies on provincial rule with a nominal central government. All I want to do is help them reach the 19th century. Aiming for much more, I think, is a fool's errand, as much as I'd like to help the Afghans.
And achieving even this much relies on Pakistan controlling their Taliban who infect Afghanistan, so that the spigot pouring jihadis into Afghanistan is turned off. Suppressing the fanatical version of Islam that Saudi Arabia has spent so much effort promoting the past several decades would reduce the jihadi problem to a trickle at the source. Success depends on so much more than our efforts inside Afghanistan that it worries me a great deal.
Certainly, we can win the Afghanistan campaign with more troops. And I want to win, and support our troops in this effort. But we have to watch what our objectives are and not try for too much believing more troops and effort can achieve that perfect end state--and believing more effort requires a bigger payoff.
Mission creep is a quiet killer of armies.
