U.S. troops returned to the area in Afghanistan they call the "dark side of the moon" this week, a remote Hindu Kush region that controls several access routes to Kabul and where the coalition suffered one of its biggest reverses in the decade-long war.
This part of Nuristan province, in the mountainous far east of Afghanistan, could be the target of a planned Taliban offensive, coalition commanders say.
In October 2009, one of our outposts endured a serious attempt to overrun their position and give the Taliban a nice massacre for the press. We won that battle but pulled our forces out. Now we are going back in.
But we're on deadline. Unlike August 1914 when troops thought they'd be home for Christmas after winning the new war, we'll be out by then whether we win or lose:
"Nuristan remains for me a challenge, a black hole. My line in the sand stops at the Kunar and Nuristan borders," said Lt-Colonel Scott Green, a wiry former Ranger who oversees Nuristan.
But he will not be in the region for long - NATO troops are due to be withdrawn from north Kunar by October. Green and his men, who are based in Kunar and in Nuristan temporarily, will be among those withdrawn.
So his reduced-strength 1st battalion has to counter insurgents while simultaneously building Afghan capability and "retrograding" - closing up U.S. bases - all within months.
We shall see. The withdrawal of our surge forces isn't the worst thing in the world. I'm on record as thinking 68,000 US troops is enough to win and that I'm worried about having even that many in land-locked Afghanistan for very long relying on Pakistan or Russia for their supply lines.
But for any number of US troops to be enough to win, we have to be using them to fight our enemies. Of course we want to hand off responsibilities to Afghans when we can get them ready. We did that in both South Vietnam and in Iraq, after all. That's Counter-insurgency 101.
But we have to make sure our friends are strong enough and our enemies weak enough for the hand off to work.
And we have to remember our friends when our troops are gone. That we failed to do in South Vietnam. The jury is out on Iraq. At least Iraq has the edge of oil income and a far weaker enemy.
The war won't be over by Christmas, no matter what our own deadlines are.
