In military/political/medical terms Iraq is a sucking chest wound, a traumatic amputation, and is on deathwatch. The greed, foolishness and malign incompetence of the Bu$h malAdministration has turned the cradle of civilization into a charnel house of proportions not seen since WWII.

Proportionally, Operation Enduring Freedom – our “good” war against the Taliban, which has always been the red-headed stepchild of Bu$h foreign policy, has once again turned septic, and the infected wound of bad policy and foolish American strategy is threatening its life also. Opium has once again become an ascendant crop in the Taliban-influenced South and has become the principle means of financing their offensives. The number and seriousness of Taliban attacks against Coalition forces are up, as well as their lethality.

Iraq Casualties.org also tracks deaths by nationality and month in Afghanistan. As you can see, we’re also losing the war of numbers there.

Some of our nitrogen-breathing brethren on the never-right might consider this a “great victory” because US numbers are down for 2007. Well, they are sometimes mathematically-challenged. This represents two-thirds of 2007; we’re on track to break a new record of 240+. Watch for things to heat up after Ramadan – our Taliban enemy is very observant, and more adaptive than we are.

Here’s another view of who’s doing the bleeding in Afghanistan – the war Mr Bu$h ignored because he didn’t have an emotional stake in it.

Today’s NY Times points out that our Afghan allies have been unable to stem the Taliban flow in the South because of a shift in tactics.

KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 26 — Over the past six weeks, the Taliban have driven government forces out of roughly half of a strategic area in southern Afghanistan that American and NATO officials declared a success story last fall in their campaign to clear out insurgents and make way for development programs, Afghan officials say.

A year after Canadian and American forces drove hundreds of Taliban fighters from the area, the Panjwai and Zhare districts southwest of Kandahar, the rebels are back and have adopted new tactics. Carrying out guerrilla attacks after NATO troops partly withdrew in July, they overran isolated police posts and are now operating in areas where they can mount attacks on Kandahar, the south’s largest city.

The setback is part of a bloody stalemate that has occurred between NATO troops and Taliban fighters across southern Afghanistan this summer. NATO and Afghan Army soldiers can push the Taliban out of rural areas, but the Afghan police are too weak to hold the territory after they withdraw. At the same time, the Taliban are unable to take large towns and have generally mounted fewer suicide bomb attacks in southern cities than they did last summer.

Last year saw an increase in suicide bomb attacks. They served their purpose of forcing Allied forces to fall back upon reinforced and barricaded bases, which allowed the Taliban, revitalized by their rest in the tribal areas of Pakistan, to carry out their own little surge, reverting to classic guerrilla form by overrunning isolated and poorly defended police posts. A number of posts fell to the attacks because they were unsupported by the Afghan Army because of fear of IEDs.

Syed Aqa Saqib, Kandahar’s provincial police chief, said Canadian and Afghan Army forces began withdrawing from four checkpoints and two small bases in Panjwai in early July. The withdrawals coincided with the rotation of Canadian military units serving in Kandahar in August, he said.

The pullback left two Afghan police posts in Panjwai largely unprotected, he said. On Aug. 7, the Taliban attacked the posts simultaneously. For several hours, the police held them off and called for help from Canadian forces, he said, but none arrived. Sixteen policemen were killed.

“The Canadians didn’t support them,” Mr. Saqib said. “Then, we went to collect our dead.”

General Laroche, the Canadian commander, said an Afghan Army unit was immediately sent to aid the police but it returned and asked for Canadian assistance, citing fears of roadside bombs. Canadian troops then arrived as quickly as they could.

The Taliban… wage intimidation campaigns against the population. Local officials report that one of the things that the insurgents do when they enter an area is to hang several local farmers, declaring them spies.

“The first thing they do is show people how brutal they are,” said Hajji Agha Lalai, the leader of the Panjwai district council. “They were hanged from the trees. For several days, they hung there.”

We saw this tactic at work for 12 years in Viet Nam. Our preferred counter-tactic there, “bombing the brutes into the Stone Age” won’t work here in Afghanistan. Actually, it didn’t work in Viet Nam, either, although it did make frustrated American military leaders think they were making progress. Rampant and heavy-handed violence just does the g’s job for him. The only method that works is “clear-and-hold” accompanied by strong rural security measure.

By all accounts the Afghan Army is competent and aggressive enough to push the Taliban back with the assistance and backing of the better-equipped Coalition forces.

Afghan Army units have performed well, according to Western officials. The trouble has come when the army and foreign troops withdraw, leaving lightly armed Afghan police forces struggling to hold rural areas. Corruption is rampant among the police, and some units have exaggerated casualty rates or abandoned checkpoints.

You can’t beat an enemy without a coordinated and consistent strategy. When you see something that works you stick with it, and a skilled leader begins rethinking his enemy’s response and formulates his next tactic.

America’s military figureheads have been away from handling troops for so long they are more aware of political wish-thinking than of real-world necessity.