Bartender, I'll take a shot of Gipper, please

While everyone focuses on 'the failures' in Iraq, quietly Afghanistan has turned sour. Several reports of late suggest the Taliban under Mullah Omar is regaining territory, and we've seen a spike in attacks along with more casualties inflicted on US troops, who call it "the forgotton war".

Supposedly the Pashtun area is still fiercely loyal to Bin Laden and crew, who's still at large unless he's dead, but we don't know. Add to that recent stories that the poppy trade is flourishing and you have a developing mess. It's doubtful we'll ever have an impact on wild west places like Waziristan and Balochistan.

What to do. Right now there is a NATO force on the ground with troops from many nations participating, including France. We can maintain status quo, increase, or decrease. If Taliban operations increase our current force levels would appear inadequate, so the solution might be to lobby foreign participants to ramp up their contributions while we deal with Iraq. That's iffy. On the flip side, if we decrease force levels the Taliban will likely take more real estate. Surely we don't want our fallen warriors to have died in vain.

Americans have a trait of 'moving on' to the next battle once the first is considered won, which is the mark of an achieving civiliation. Most people consider Afghanistan won, since we defeated the Taliban in 2001 and set up a new government with elections and all. Problem is, these guys aren't all dead yet, especially their fearless leader. We all know that patience is one of their few virtues.

Politically speaking the 64,000 question to be answered in November is whether the American electorate will display the will to continue fighting by keeping the status quo. In light of the backsliding in both Iraq and Afghanistan coupled with zero follow-on attacks since 9/11, it's possible many will view continued fighting as not worth the trouble, or that a retreat wouldn't be so bad.

Until then the magic of the internet will bring us excellent coverage from sites such as the Counterterrorism Blog and Michael Yon reporting from the ground.

Nobody said the War on Terror was going to be a cake walk. There may be darker days ahead. Matter of fact, here's what someone actually said regarding the subject:

Our response involves far more than instant retaliation and isolated strikes. Americans should not expect one battle, but a lengthy campaign, unlike any other we have ever seen. .

I confess the original title of this post was going to be "Afghanistan is not looking good". But I got to thinking about those words from that emotional speech back in 2001. Here are a few more:

"We will not tire, we will not falter, and we will not fail.".

He went on to say life would return to a sense of normalcy, which it has. He also asked us not to forget 9/11, and most haven't. But somehow, through all the turmoil those words have gone pale. A leader's job is to inspire, but it seems the current leadership is running a little low on that of late. A shot of Gipper would do wonders about now.