Are Our Afghan Allies Wining The Battles Against The Taliban?

U.S. Army soldiers from Alpha Company, 1st Platoon, Personnel Security Detail, 101st Airborne Division prepare for a mission at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan, on Jan. 31, 2009. DoD photo by Sgt. 1st Class Benjamin R. Bond, U.S. Army. (Released)

Winning The Battle, Losing The War? -- Foreign Policy Blog

I see that senior U.S. counterterrorism officials are bragging to NPR that al Qaeda is getting whipped in the rural wilds of Pakistan:

CIA-directed airstrikes against al-Qaida leaders and facilities in Pakistan over the past six to nine months have been so successful, according to senior U.S. officials, that it is now possible to foresee a "complete al-Qaida defeat" in the mountainous region along the border with Afghanistan.

The officials say the terrorist network's leadership cadre has been "decimated," with up to a dozen senior and midlevel operatives killed as a result of the strikes and the remaining leaders reeling from the repeated attacks.

Read more ....

My Comment: The U.S. soldiers may be winning their battles, but their Afghan and Pakistani allies are losing their battles. The frontier regions in Pakistan are now under Taliban control, and in Afghanistan the Afghan military and Afghan police forces are too few and too unprepared to counter the Taliban and their supporters. No surprise .... the Taliban have been boasting that they control 3/4 of the countryside.

When you look at the big picture, the Taliban are winning most of the battles .... and they are winning the war.

Like Vietnam, the U.S. won most if not all of their battles, but their Vietnamese allies were often defeated/massacred by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese regulars. When the Americans left, it took two years before everything collapsed and the North Vietnamese were victorious.