SOMEBODY TELL THE WINGNUTS

I recall one of the radio gasbags saying a few months ago that we were winning in Afghanistan. The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn't think so:

9/11 seven years later: U.S. 'safe,' South Asia in turmoil
By Jonathan S. Landay and Saeed Shah McClatchy Newspapers
Posted on Wednesday, September 10, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Seven years after 9/11, al Qaida and its allies are gaining ground across the region where the plot was hatched, staging their most lethal attacks yet against NATO forces and posing a growing threat to the U.S.-backed governments in Afghanistan and nuclear-armed Pakistan.

"I am not convinced we are winning it in Afghanistan," Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, conceded before a congressional committee on Tuesday.

Experts inside and outside the U.S. government agreed that a key reason for the resurgence is a growing popular sympathy for the militants because an over-reliance on the use of force, especially airpower, by NATO has killed hundreds of civilians.

Mullen said he is examining "a new, more comprehensive strategy for the region," an acknowledgement that the current approach lacks coordinated reconstruction and humanitarian programs.

"We cannot kill our way to victory," said Mullen, who warned that the U.S. and its allies "are running out of time."

Back in June, I wrote that maybe Al Qaeda was ruining its reputation because of all the tribal leaders it has killed in Pakistan but sadly that doesn't seem to have occurred:

Despite killing many more civilians than the allies have, the insurgents are also winning the all important "information war" for the hearts and minds of the region's deeply religious Muslims, U.S. military officials conceded.

The insurgents' sophisticated propaganda machinery exaggerates civilian casualties caused by foreign forces and reinforces perceptions fueled by U.S. abuses against captured detainees that the Bush administration is waging a war against Islam.