Afghanistan and Iraq

One day is not enough to see how the war is going. However, the news today is not good. In Afghanistan, 3 helicopters were destroyed, two in a mid-air collision and the other possibly by hostile fire. Two attacks in Iraq have left at least 155 dead, making this the worse attacks in years.

As a general rule it is unwise to jump to any conclusions. Seeing as the U.S. is scaling back and withdrawing from Iraq, it is clear that the war in Iraq continues. The fighting in Afghanistan has been increasing for the past few months so heavier losses can be expected. The overall concern here is that our strategic posture is shifting to a defensive one and the pressure from our enemies appears to be increasing.

I have been expecting something along these lines. As our emphasis shifts to using the civilian police and FBI for internal defense from the use of our military to wage offensive warfare, we can expect our enemy to regain the initiative by increased activity. This shift of the U.S. to a defensive posture is not completed, so we can expect this trend to continue. In addition, we can expect our enemy to become more active in areas where he has been less active and in new areas where he had not been active before. This process will most likely take at least another year or two before it becomes more obvious.