Startling Evidence of Success.  

Colleague Bill Roggio, Long War Journal, includes this startling video from Al Jazeera that records evidence of a captured American weapons cache and burnt-out, abandoned vehicles left over from the Taliban victory at a severely remote ISAF outposts in Nuristan Province (eastern Afghanistan) on October 3-4 that resulted in US casualties and a hasty retreat from the region. The reports at the time, which Bill Roggio and I discussed that weekend in surprise,  were that the Taliban assault troops came in waves, as many as 300 attackers, and that the fighting continued over night. Despite repeated US airstrikes, the Taliban pressed the assault.  Within a week, word came that ISAF had abandoned the position it had fought to maintain.  Roggio writes: "The Taliban provide footage from what was formerly known as Combat Outpost Keating in the Kamdesh district in Nuristan province. The Taliban now are in full control of the district and claim to have recovered US munitions at the site."  What this may mean in Washington is that Stanley McChrystal's ISAF, over-committed, out-numbered, is already in retreat from the Taliban offensive along the AfPakia border to the East. This reminds of the retreat on the Korean Peninsula in the summer of 1950, before MacArthur's counter-attack at Inchon Peninsula.  Retreat is not a plan.  At this point, it is a mystery what POTUS and the DoD have available to respond to the Taliban cockiness evident in this video.   Is ISAF already defeated in the East of the country?  Is the delay at the White House because there is no politically sophisticated way to acknowledge surrender and flight?  How do you secure a country when the enemy holds the East?  A withdrawal to the cities may be in order, building strategic hamlets with the clear and hold strategy used by General Abrams in the late Vietnam war.  And yet video like this suggests that the Taliban is highly motivated, has good intelligence, enjoys easy recruiting, know how to pick a fight, is unafraid of American airpower.  Speaking Saturday 14 with my AfPakia roundtable of Bill Roggio, Rufus Phillips, Ari Rafiq re the White House dilemma, and re the latest controversy over the leak of a memo from Afghanistan Ambassador Eikenberry.