Battle Of Kandahar Started

The Taliban hit Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan for the second time in a week. This time 12 Taliban fighters were killed and no good guys. Then the Taliban attacked Kandahar Air Base with mortars, rockets, and a sizeable force. At least 10 Taliban fighters were killed and no good guys. NATO helicopter gunships spent hours chewing up nearby fields so there was probably another dozen or so bad guys killed in the after action.
The Taliban has been conducting a surge into Kandahar and Marja. Combat is heating up in both these areas and in other parts of the country. US Special Forces have executed over 100 hundred raids in Kandahar over the past few weeks, aimed at killing or capturing Taliban leaders. It is safe to say that the Battle of Kandahar has started.
Kandahar is a city of 1 million people. Half of its districts are firmly under Taliban control; the bad guys are effectively running governments in these districts. Part of the Taliban surge is a campaign to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. Mullah Omar has ordered his people to stop beheading criminals. Now they use firing squads.
It is disappointing that the Battle of Marja is still ongoing. The Marines are slowly expanding the parts of Marja that they control by giving fertilizer, seed, and agricultural equipment to farmers. The Marines then protect these famers from the bad guys. Every week a smaller percentage of farmers accepting this stuff are killed. The battle will be over when zero farmers are killed. The Marines also control everything leaving the farms through elaborate checkpoints. Marja produces more opium than any other part of Afghanistan and the Marines are finding success in choking off drug money to the bad guys. It is incredibly slow going.
Now that he has sewn up his domestic agenda with healthcare and financial reform, President Obama is getting ready to give a major speech on foreign policy. There will be a lot of fluff in the speech but he will make two main points: The US will rely on native troops to do most of the Long War fighting, and there is something called the Long War going on. He won’t use the phrase “Long War” of course but he will start preparing the American public for the fact that while there might be a troop reduction in Afghanistan next year, it will be modest and American forces will be there for a very long time. And he might say something like, “I cannot rule out the deployment of US troops to other troubled regions of the world besides Afghanistan.”