Time for honesty on Afghan objectives.

(From Western Daily Press)

Mong politicians and military leaders involved in the war in Afghanistan, the buzz word is "counter-insurgency". Military and political leaders in the United States and the United Kingdom talk about the need to launch effective counter-insurgency strategies in Afghanistan and against global threats of Islamic extremist violence.

Armchair analysts and experts on "strategy" hail the lessons of conflicts in Malaysia and Kenya, and former President Bush was rumoured to have been tutored on the lessons of French counter-insurgency in Algeria, by no less a figure than Henry Kissinger, when trying to grapple with the disaster of Iraq.

A new more explicit counter-insurgency orientation is believed to be at the heart of President Obama's revised Af-Pak (Afghanistan-Pakistan) strategy.

It is a …