But now that the surge is over--and now that our ground forces are largely depleted--Iran is much stronger, the Taliban is resurgent, and we still haven't reached anything resembling success in Iraq. This all occurring against the backdrop of a failing state in Afghanistan.

As Jon Soltz told the American Prospect last week, had those same forces been allocated to Afghanistan--the theater deemed most important by General David Petraeus--then we could have doubled our forces there.

SOLTZ: Now you have a situation where, if you'd taken those five [surge] brigades and put them in Afghanistan, you'd have doubled the amount of combat brigades on the ground for a year in Afghanistan, at a ...

But now that the surge is over--and now that our ground forces are largely depleted--Iran is much stronger, the Taliban is resurgent, and we still haven't reached anything resembling success in Iraq. This all occurring against the backdrop of a failing state in Afghanistan.

As Jon Soltz told the American Prospect last week, had those same forces been allocated to Afghanistan--the theater deemed most important by General David Petraeus--then we could have doubled our forces there.

SOLTZ: Now you have a situation where, if you'd taken those five [surge] brigades and put them in Afghanistan, you'd have doubled the amount of combat brigades on the ground for a year in Afghanistan, at a critical moment in that conflict. It's basically a policy of retreat for McCain and Bush. Why don't they want to take the fight to the enemy? Because they have this obsession with Iraq. They're trying to declare victory on the surge, it's a political spin, it's not real and it doesn't exist.

Not surprisingly, America's top military leader, Admiral Mike Mullen agrees:

Let me also say just a word about Afghanistan. I am and have been for some time now deeply troubled by the increasing violence there. The Taliban and their supporters have, without question, grown more effective and more aggressive in recent weeks and as the casualty figures clearly demonstrate. . .

I've made no secret of my desire to flow more forces, U.S. forces, to Afghanistan just as soon as I can, nor have I been shy about saying that those forces will not be available unless or until the situation in Iraq permits us to do so.

That's straight from the horse's mouth: We can't send more troops to fight the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan because they're all tied up in Iraq.