More ominously, the general says, we can expect a Taliban drive to erase Afghanistan's border with Pakistan in the wild frontier provinces of Pakistan that have provided sanctuary for Taliban and al Qaida leaders and fighters since Osama bin Laden escaped there in 2001.

Military means, he writes, won't be enough to counter terror created by resurgent Taliban forces; we can't win with a war of attrition; and the economic and political support from the international community is inadequate.

The battle will only be won, McCaffrey says, when there's a real Afghan police presence in all of the country's 34 provinces and 398 districts; when the Afghan National Army is expanded from 80,000 troops today to 200,000 troops; when we deploy five U.S. combat engineer battalions with a brigade of Army Stryker forces for security to begin a five-year road building program that also trains Afghan Army engineer units and employs Afghan contractors and workers.

McCaffrey is not a fan of Petraeus... just keep that in mind. And Petraeus is now in charge of the whole theatre. McCaffrey was wrong on the Iraqi surge. I would take his comments as sour grapes.