country. the fighting there is very slow and incremental right now and there s no sense that putin is going to stop. the major offensive isn t going to be something that resembled last february with, you know, suddenly a drive for kyiv, but rather just more russian men, more russian men, just trying to make slow progress, joe, it s going to be this stagnant thing and the hope is, though, is that ukraine would be able to launch its own counteroffensive to try to repel that and maybe get some sweeping gains and at the end of the spring offensive, there s a sense that both sides will look at where things stand. maybe then we start having thoughts about a negotiated settlement. that s a long way off. but you talk about the meat grinder, you see the images from world war i, you see the movies, read the books about world war i and you just wonder how russia is stumbling into this again. but it s exactly what they re
emboldened by the withdrawal of us troops, the militants have taken more territory in afghanistan in the past two months than at any time since they were ousted from power in 2001. have a look at these two maps. the areas in red were under taliban control injuly. fast forward to august the area in red is what the taliban controls now. more territory has fallen. the timing of the taliban s offensive isn t surprising they ve seized the opportunity to attack the afghan military, with the majority of us led foreign troops no longer in the country. and critical of that move is the us. general hr mcmaster who served as national security advisor under donald trump from 2017 2018. he s been speaking to the bbc. i think what we re seeing is a disaster unfolding that was completely predictable. predictable because of our self delusion, and our self defeat. and what we are seeing is the result of our abandonment of our sustained effort to support security for the afghan people there, and the
not want to fail or not want gadhafi to survive this politically. i agree with that. i also think dennis statement as quoted, you know, leaves too much wiggle room leaving it up to the people of libya is not our policy. it is our policy to make sure this actually happens. and i don t think i don t think that s you know, whether they do it or if they do it. but nic, is there a real problem with what we ve agree to under the u.n. resolution and what we ve told our allies about how limited this is so if you start arming the rebels to go on the offensive isn t that a possible violation or isn t that in violation of the u.n. resolution itself? the mandate is to protect civilians so the u.s. military in press conferences justified the air strikes today saying we re protecting civilians in besieged cities in ajdabiya and misrata but the larger picture is this, if we continue with the current strategy, we re heading towards either stalemate where neither side wins, that means
kandahar is the taliban stronghold in the south and where the united states hopes to have its next big military offenseive. if you fight with the powers that be you can t fight the people we re trying to route. we tried to take the the obama administration tried to take the tough road with karzai and it didn t seem to work. it just made him flighty and he started talking about joining the taliban. now they re trying a different tact. what we re reading over the weekend in many publications with reporters there is the taliban offensive isn t going well. they thought they cleared areas out in the last offensive in the early part of the spring but now you look back and the taliban are back in control, about to go into kandahar and face a fight bigger than they want. this is a big problem. remember the idea was we were