NATO and U.S. forces are facing more resistance than expected and it sounds like it will take longer than expected for the forces to take the Taliban stronghold. Shock and awe is not happening. Nobody is laying down their weapons and walking over to the U.S. side with arms up and a white flag. Remember a few days ago when that was the hope? We would take over with pamphlets and threats? Didn’t happen.

"In Marjah itself there remains stiff resistance from the insurgents. It will be some days before we can be completely confident that Marjah is secure," said Major General Nick Carter, British commander of NATO forces in southern Afghanistan. He also said it was as if the operation was at the “end of the beginning”. Which means, there is a long way to go. At least there is no Mission Accomplished banner.

The Pentagon says that it looks like Taliban forces are digging in for a fight to the death. So it seems we will have to kill a whole lot more people before this situation is anything like under control the way U.S. forces want it to be.

It could take months for us to understand whether the NATO strike has been successful.

Expect more suicide bombings and guerrilla tactics. Expect more statements from NATO and the U.S. about things not going quite as they planned they would. Expect, in essence, a war the way you heard about wars from Europe and Vietnam.

According to Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, "…there still are holdouts who have remained in Marjah and elsewhere in Helmand, who have stayed to fight, and they are clearly going to fight to the bitter end."

There had been much talk about how quickly the offensive would happen and make an impact. Now, those predictions are being reassessed and pushed back.

"I guess it will take us another 25 to 30 days to be entirely sure that we have secured that which needs to be secured, and we probably won't know for about 120 days whether or not the population is entirely convinced by the degree of commitment that their government is showing to them," said Carter.

Which makes sense. It’s still a successful operation right now. Sort of the way a business can be considered to be not doing well if it makes only a 12% profit when the stock needs a 20% profit margin to be deemed a successful investment. While the NATO forces are making progress, it’s not the kind of progress they wanted or expected or planned on.

It sounds to me like things are going positively for our side, just not as positively as they wanted- ok, then. What should we be doing? Not much, just understanding that this is how wars work. Afghanistan continues to not be the focus of the Obama administration, being locked in many domestic issues like economics and unemployment and the continuing issues with China. Let us hope that there is more positive news on the horizon here and that things continue to be successful even if not as successful as originally planned… or hoped for.

Photo Credit: The U.S. Army (via Flickr under CCL)