Funferal

Western campaign in Afghanistan close to collapse?

On A Critical Ear (my show on WRFU) last Thursday, Bob Naiman pointed listeners to the the comments of Senate majority leader Frist who, after a visit to Afghanistan, said that the Afghan war against Taliban guerrillas can never be won militarily, and advocated bringing some of those who see themselves as Taliban into government. Bob argued that this comment was one of the more significant events of the past week (and also that the response of Pelosi, who jumped on Frist, accusing him of wanting to ‘cut and run’ was, to say the least, unfortunate).
Now the BBC is reporting that the NATO commander in Afghanistan has said the country’s citizens may start supporting the Taleban unless their lives improve in the next six months. I don’t think we can overstate the significance of these various reports – from Frist and now Gen. Richards. It indicates that intelligence estimates are more than conflicted on the situation in Afghanistan – when the military commander is openly stating that the battle could be lost in coming months, you know he means it. Richards is looking for extra troops now, to devote to reconstruction and development efforts. He claims that without 2,500 extra troops working on such efforts now, during the coming winter, that much larger numbers next Spring would be useless:

If we do not take advantage of this, then you can pour an additional 10,000 troops next year and we would not succeed because we would have lost by then the consent of the people.