"Violence is up, and I think violence will continue to rise, particularly over the summer months," Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, NATO's Afghanistan commander, said last week.
By then, there will be 100,000 pairs of American boots on the ground - more than double last summer, including three times as many Special Operations Forces. With more troops comes more combat - and more casualties.
This is all quite predictable. We'll see how steady the anti-Iraq War side is after years of claiming we had to retreat from Iraq to win the "good war" in Afghanistan.
