Recently, the US military announced that they would be changing the general on the ground in Afghanistan as they continue to implement Obama’s Afpak strategy. As I reported yesterday, this decision, in addition to Obama considering a reduction in drone strikes in Pakistan and concentrating his new strategy on military advisers rather than combat troops, has emboldened the Taliban who are sensing either indecisiveness or weakness or both. To Obama’s credit, today there was a drone strike in Pakistan that killed some militants, so the Taliban still have reason to be afraid.

The Taliban attacked the city of Khost and entered government buildings killing security guards, police officers, and civilians in the process. US forces have entered the city in response and have killed some militants. This offensive is the logical consequence of their perception of our indecisiveness. The Taliban understand that they cannot win this war military, so their strategy is a psychological one, a terror-based one. They want to discredit the central government and demoralize coalition forces through surprise attacks, suicide attacks, and raids like this one.

In order to defeat the Taliban, we must win the psychological war and we must not allow for the continued existence of safe havens anywhere, particularly in Pakistan. We can only win the psychological war by making the Taliban understand that they will be defeated no matter what they do, by not turning the local population against us, and by empowering the Afghan and Pakistani government. Empowering does not mean unlimited aid, it means helping in joint missions, some joint intelligence, using precision air and drone strikes, and helping in the training of their forces if they need it. We are already doing most of these things, but increasingly the current administration is being pressured into abandoning precision strikes and leaving the battle only to the Afghans and the Pakistanis. The war in Afghanistan and Pakistan is against the Taliban and Al Qaeda that launched a terrorist attack on us, so we cannot simply let others take responsibility for this war. Hopefully, the new cooperation that this administration says it is receiving will help bring this war to an end sooner.

-AG