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WORLD VIEW:ROADSIDE BOMBS are causing mounting casualties in Afghanistan among US and British troops. In May, 465 coalition troops were killed, and an even larger number of Afghan soldiers. This is creating another round of political soul-searching about the war and its purposes just as the Obama administration puts in another 17,000 troops, bringing the overall US force to 70,000 on a graduated basis, writes PAUL GILLESPIE.

Along with this goes a new US strategy to fight against the Taliban there and in neighbouring Pakistan, distinguishing them sharply as “accidental guerrillas” from al-Qaeda. The Pakistani army’s large-scale operation against Taliban control of the Swat valley over the last two months is part of the same strategy. The spectre of “Obama’s Vietnam” is being raised more loudly as the full picture of his commitment to the war emerges. It is in several ways a misleading analogy, but useful for giving perspective to the long-standing US involvement in the region, which was obscured by the Bush administration’s conduct of the war in Iraq.