Afghanistan war: a "significant public relations challenge"

That chart was at the beginning of this year. Now U.S. troop numbers are up to 68,000 and General McChrystal wants more, though it is impolitic to blurt it out.

White House Details Ways to Rate Progress in Afghanistan and Pakistan

"This will be an honest effort to grade ourselves," one senior administration official told reporters, saying that in some cases "there will be a significant public relations challenge" if the White House, or an outside panel, determines that elements of the program are failing.

New York Times, Sept. 16, 2009

Let's see:

• You occupy a country for 8 years and your enemies (or anyway some set of people who are pretty hostile) now control more of it than you do;

• Most of the opium that reaches your European allies now comes from that country;

• You hold an election in which one third of the "votes" are suspected of being fraudulent and which many tribal groups assume was illegitimate;

• Your own people and most of your allies no longer see any purpose in prolonging the dying.

This goes beyond "public relations." This is failure.

Stop it -- now.