As recently as Aug. 7, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan declared the Taliban a "defeated" and "spent" terrorist force, and vowed publicly, together with President George W. Bush, to finish off the militia. But barely seven weeks later, Karzai has publicly pleaded with the reclusive Taliban leader, Mullah Mohammad Omar, and a notoriously murderous warlord leader, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to meet with him for peace talks.

Despite all the claims of victory by NATO, the Taliban has managed to become far more effective in widening its networks of support and in building its operational and propaganda capacity.

If the Karzai government enters a coalition with the Taliban, it will not only amount to the defeat of what the United States and its allies have been promising in support of building a secure, stable and democratic Afghanistan, but also runs the risk of igniting a savage ethnic conflict in the country.

No one should underestimate the wider regional implications of such a scenario.

In the zero-sum game that is the management of US Army deployments, the consequences of The Surge are as predictable as a game of Whac-A-Mole.