joining me to talk about all this, david kilcullen. david is a former army officer who helped plan the troops in both iraq and afghanistan. he is a profess this man is a professor of boston university. they are in opposition on this. >> when the surge began in iraq, they said the directive of the surge would be to raise casualties because the u.s. forces would be actively engaging the enemy in ways they

joining me to talk about all this, david kilcullen. david is a former army officer who helped the u.s. plan the troops in both iraq and afghanistan. andrew besovich is a professor of boston university. they are in opposition on this. is this uptick in violence good news, by which i mean when the surge began in iraq, general petraeus warned that the initial effect of the surge would be to actually raise troop casualties because the united states forces would be actively engaging the enemy in ways they had not done so far. is that what's happening in afghanistan? >> i think we're inevitably going to see some increase in casualties in the next few months, but i do think casualties aren't necessarily a particularly good indicator of whether you're winning or losing. casualties, both to the civilian population and to coalition forces, tend to be very low in two kinds of places, places that are completely controlled by the government and places that are completely controlled by the enemy. so, the absence of casualties doesn't necessarily mean

joining me to talk about all this, david kilcullen. d is a former army officer who helped plan the troops in both iraq and afghanistan. he is a profess this man is a professor of boston university. they are in opposition on this. >> when the surge began in iraq, they said the directive of the surge would be to raise casualties because the u.s. forces would be actively engaging the enemy in ways they had not done so far. is that what's happening in afghanistan? >> i think we're inevitably going to see some increase in casualties in the next few months, but i do think casualties aren't necessarily a particularly good indicator of whether you're winning or losing. casualties, both to the civilian population and to coalition forces, tend to be very low in two kind of places, places that are completely controlled by the government and places that are completely controlled by the enemy. so the absence of casualties doesn't necessarily mean you're doing well or doing badly. and the presence of casualties that we're finding in some areas just t