News From Chimpy's Wars

They may be able to reduce troop numbers in Iraq by 7,000 "next year."

Riiight. Let's not forget that the pre-"surge" troop count was 130,000 and it is currently 146,000. The "surge" may be over, but there is about a division's worth of extra soldiers still hanging around, presumably to pick up cigarette butts and wash the generals' Humvees because, after all, the "surge worked." Anyway, when the replacements for those 7,000 soldiers come over, they're going to Afghanistan, so it's one war for another, which isn't exactly an improvement.

Oh, and that claim by the Pentagon that "only seven civilians died in an air strike," the one where they charged that "anyone saying different is working for the Taliban?" Seems that our esteemed generals were again lying. These wars have one thing in common with Vietnam (besides the "intractable conflict against guerrilla forces on the Asian continent" part): Once again, you cannot trust a word that is said by the U.S. military. They lie left, right and center. Everything is filtered, spun and shaded.

In Afghanistan and Iraq, for that matter, AK-47s are about as commonplace as .22s are here. The "they had an AK, so they had to be Taliban/ al Qaeda" rationale just doesn't stand up.

Here is another truth about insurgencies: You cannot win a war against an insurgency by air power alone. You cannot "bomb your way" to victory. Reliance on the Air Force and 2,000lb bombs to destroy mud houses is losing this war. When more Afghans say, as they are now, that the "Americans are worse than the Russians," then we are on the way to losing. You cannot prevail in a counter-insurgency campaign if the locals hate your guts, not unless you are willing to engage in the sort of blood-soaked campaign that would have made Hitler's Wehrmacht smile.

You don't have to make a detailed study of counter-insurgency to know that, you only have to know more than Bush does.

Which is not all that hard.