Clearing the brush out of the orchards

Like Bush trying to clear out brush on his Crawford ranch, NATO has finally started about the business of clearing the Taliban out of the towns it seized earlier this week. CNN keeps reminding us that their offensive follows the "daring and well-executed jailbreak," as if the Taliban militant operation was worthy of a made-for-TV movie. The operation began Wednesday and consisted of more than 2,000 troops, 800 of which apparently were Afghans. Afghan and Canadian soldiers seem to have been at the pointy end of this particular spear and, as one might expect, the casualty figures vary widely. So while NATO claims to have cleared the Taliban out, the Taliban succeeded in clearing out more that 5,000 families in their offensive. And that's a lousy balance in this seemingly neverending brushfire war.