One Victory, Many Questions - Die Zeit, Germany

Perhaps the Pentagon should label Marjah a #2 city like all the #2 terrorists they've captured to keep the lost war going.

http://watchingamerica.com/News/47655/one-victory-many-questions/

Is Marjah really a victory? And if so, will be it be a lasting one? Will more German troops help decide the outcome of the war, or will Germany just sink deeper into the Afghan swamp? Are the Taliban attacks on Kabul hotels acts of desperation or do they show the Taliban’s strength?

We can give no definitive answers. Only one thing is certain: time is on the Taliban’s side. They don’t have to win; they only have to continue fighting for another year, perhaps even two or three years. And they’ll continue fighting because, unlike the NATO troops, they have no homeland to which they can return. Whether NATO will be successful in bringing some Taliban to the negotiating table is more than doubtful. But even then, the time factor is decisive. Why negotiate for something now when they’ll get the same thing down the road at a cheaper price in a couple of years? Why should they negotiate a compromise with the government in Kabul today if they can topple it tomorrow?

The Taliban has plenty of time, and NATO has none. NATO is running out of breath. The Netherlands’ decision to withdraw its troops this year is a dramatic example of that, and it’s not a bad thing. NATO’s weakness should be interpreted as the beginning of NATO’s end as a global interventionist power.

The trans-Atlantic defense alliance, originally meant to be an anti-Soviet bulwark, was redefined as an active global military arm of the West soon after the end of the Cold War. The 1999 war in Kosovo was its first test, and Afghanistan is the biggest and most important test. If NATO breaks in Afghanistan, it’s NATO as a global intervention force that will have failed, not NATO as a defense alliance.

It should have been disbanded in the 1990s or scaled back to the basic command and communcation functions.

I don't understand the various efforts to depict Marjah as insignificant, or even worse as foreshadowing some kind of defeat. This is not South Vietnam, where Ho Chi-Minhn had overwhelming support among the population. The Taliban are a minority, and it not at all a lost cause.