Are we losing Afghanistan to the resurgent Taliban? The facts and figures set out in the 152-page report the Pentagon sent Congress last week compel the conclusion that we are.

The new report says that the Taliban regards 2009 as their most successful year. It says that violence in Afghanistan is at a level roughly double compared to the same period last year. And it concedes that all the counterinsurgency has accomplished so far has been to create “some islands of security…in a sea of instability and insecurity.” In that roiling sea, the Taliban often retaliate against whole families or villages for cooperating with US forces.

How we got to this point is important.

Last year, conservatives criticized Obama for spending months deliberating a new strategy for Afghanistan. As a result of the president ordering a strategic review of Afghanistan (the second of 2009), Gen. Stanley McChrystal submitted his report to the president on August 30 asking for at least 40,000 more troops. Obama delayed a decision until December 1 when he announced he would send an additional 30,000 troops ("McChrystal lite") and impose a deadline of July 2011 for US forces to begin to withdraw.

In the end, however, Obama's three month delay is irrelevant because the deadline - even if it were extended by an equal period - cannot be met.

McChrystal's August report to Obama stated that, "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." Both Petraeus and McChrystal were unusually public in lobbying the president for the resources they sought. In October Petraeus said that our goals in Afghanistan would have to be changed -- meaning adjusted downward - if the president rejected the strategy revisions and increased resources he and McChrystal said were needed.

The Obama-Petraeus-McChrystal counterinsurgency strategy - "COIN" in Pentagonese - is supposed to be based on the bible of counterinsurgency warfare, the late David Galula's "Counterinsurgency Warfare, Theory and Practice." Comparing Galula's bible and McChrystal's August 2009 report to the new Pentagon report reveals some alarming conclusions. COIN - as Galula wrote - aims to counter the insurgent's offer of a competing political system which it may impose by force or by protecting the populace from an unpopular government, providing better security and services than the government can.

In Afghanistan, where the populace is a cacophony of tribal cultures and Kabul is unable to provide basic services (courts, security, economic pipelines) there is little reason for tribes and villages to adhere to any central government. The Taliban tax the opium crops, offer Islamic courts and local government services and - where villagers resist - impose them by terror.

The new report cites eighty "Key Terrain" districts - population and economic activity centers, essential infrastructure locations and commerce routes - as well as lesser but still important forty-one additional "Area of Interest" districts. The report says that the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force) only has sufficient resources to operate the counterinsurgency in only forty-five of the eighty "Key Terrain" areas and three Areas of Interest.

That the ISAF force is unable to provide security in so many Key Terrain areas and Areas of Interest is a principal reason for the April report's finding that the "population sympathizes with or supports the Afghan government in [only] 24%" of those areas.

The aim of counterinsurgency, according to Galula, is "...to cut off, or at least reduce significantly, the contacts between the populace and the guerillas...This process of getting acquainted with the population may be speeded up if the occupied villages are divided into sections and each is assigned to a group of soldiers who will always work there." (emphasis added.)The Afghans know we are leaving next year and that our soldiers won't always be there to protect them.

We are nine months into the year that Gen. McChrystal said would be determinative of our ability to defeat the Taliban. And, in fourteen months, President Obama's timeline requires us to begin a withdrawal. With government support among the populace in only 24% of the important areas of Afghanistan it is impossible for us to even raise that to 50% before August 2010 or, for that matter, by July 2011. And who is to say if 50% or 75% (or even 100%) would be enough given the critical support the Taliban receive from Iran and other Islamic states?

Galula cites five types of outside support an insurgency can benefit from: moral (the "inevitability of Islam"), political (preventing by diplomacy support for the government), technical (military training), financial, and direct military support. The Taliban, according to the Pentagon report, receive funding from several Islamic states. Iran, the report says, provides "lethal assistance" to elements of the Taliban and predicts Iranian interference will continue for "the foreseeable future."

Which the Bush administration before, and the Obama administration now, have not been willing to face up to. And that - regardless of timetables - is the fundamental flaw in America's approach to counterinsurgency (i.e. "nation-building") in Iraq and now Afghanistan. As I wrote in the Washington Times on September 12, 2001 - and on many occasions since - the nations that sponsor terrorism are our principal enemy in this war. We need not make war against all of the nations that sponsors terrorism. But until we recognize that we cannot end state sponsorship of terrorism by fighting proxy wars, we cannot "win" anywhere at all.