Have you noticed? It has become much bloodier

What with WikiLeaks and all, there has been a torrent of new developments and diplomatic presumptions recently about the fighting in Afghanistan. Still, there are two areas, I think, that are not getting nearly enough attention.

The main one is that there has been a significant new approach to combat operations there that represent an important shift in U.S. military doctrine.

More importantly, this development would appear critical to understand how this war is likely to proceed.

In the U.S. military command right now there is much less talk of winning the "hearts and minds" of the Afghan people and more about "bodies." That would be bodies as in "body counts."

Simply put, the U.S. offensive has moved into what is being called "very high op tempo," which is designed to kill as many Taliban soldiers as possible and wipe out guerrilla leaders through Special Forces raids and aerial attacks.

The American command, which used to downplay body counts to avoid stirring up Afghan sentiments, now trumpets the score: In a recent 90-day period, for example, it reported that 1,540 allied operations led to the deaths of 983 Taliban fighters as well as the deaths or capture of a record 339 so-called leaders.

As part of these operations, more than 2,000 ordinary insurgents were also captured. But, for America's generals, it is the number of Taliban leaders eliminated that is the most important factor.

For the Taliban, usually reckoned to be only about 35,000 strong, the loss of so many combat leaders has to be difficult to absorb.

Shoot and talk

"Every 24 hours on average we're killing three to five mid-level enemy leaders," U.S. Gen. John Nicholson claimed recently.

As a result, he noted, the Taliban are showing inevitable strain. "It's lowered the average age of enemy leadership because they're getting killed so quickly. It's severely disrupting their command and control."

This approach is strongly endorsed by the British who believe that most insurgencies are best crippled by progressively eliminating layers of leadership.

One of the top British generals in Afghanistan, a man who also played a role in battering the IRA into a peace agreement, told me that "if you can peel away the first three layers of leaders, you're left with the too young, and the too stupid."

Of course, grand military claims like these always need to be read with caution. But there is little doubt that we are seeing a new phase in this war,for several reasons.

One is that the American command is under intense pressure from Barack Obama to get results quickly because Western patience for this conflict is fast running out.

To this end, the commanding general for the allied side, the U.S.'s David Petraeus has concluded that the more defensive counter-insurgency doctrine known as COIN, which he famously championed in the Iraq theatre, is not transferable to Afghanistan, despite what he may have initially hoped.

COIN gave precedence to protecting civilian populations while expanding development efforts and other reforms aimed at winning over local support.

But, NATO did not have enough forces to fully protect so many remote Afghan communities in Taliban-prone areas, and without that protection a hearts-and-mind approach was having little effect.

What's more, senior military analysts came to believe that the Taliban have simply thrown out much of the conventional wisdom about guerrilla warfare.

In fact, they have chosen to ignore the most favourite doctrine of all: Mao's insistence that "rebels must swim like fish in the sea of the people."

The Taliban, who have never even sought support of half the population women, have no illusions about their lack of popularity. They instead command their support mainly through threats and terror.

So, with hearts and minds less of a factor, this war is now veering bloodily towards Mao's second famous dictum: "All power comes from the point of a gun."

The upshot? Expect a long war that is already brutal and ugly to become more of both.

The parliamentary vote

Another under-covered area when it comes to Afghanistan is Canada's non-vote on maintaining our 1,000-strong training force there after our supposed pullout next summer.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, both the federal Conservatives and Liberals agreed not to put the new Canadian training mission to a vote in Parliament.

Both parties argued that there are many precedents for sending our peacekeepers off to train others without Parliament's blessing. And as this new Afghan role is to be non-combat, there is little risk and no need for debate in this case either.

This seems to be entirely missing the most essential point.

When we train troops in, say, Sierra Leone, no one threatens retaliation against Canada and Canadians abroad, as the Taliban and their supporters have.

The Afghan situation is unlike anything we've faced before.

I'm not talking here about the risk to our trainers, which is very real as Taliban guerrillas continue to infiltrate Afghan military and police units,killing trainers in the process.

Risk is something soldiers take on willingly for missions of national interest, something that stabilizing Afghanistan clearly is.

No, the risk we should be discussing and debating openly is a very direct one to the country itself.

By continuing a military presence of whatever nature in Afghanistan up until 2014, Canada puts itself squarely in the target of international terrorism.

Remember, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Service has warned all along that the likelihood of terror attacks inside Canada flows directly from our involvement in Afghanistan.

That's why we're high on al-Qaeda's hit list. Indeed, that's why the so-called Toronto 18 plotted setting off bombs in downtown Toronto.

The government and the Liberal opposition are fully aware of that connection.

By staying on, we extend the risk that our own communities may be hit by a retaliatory attack and this point deserves to be highlighted by a full and open debate.

My own view favours extending the training mission as it has been proposed.

Serious nations can't cringe in the face of terrorism and allow the likes of al-Qaeda to dictate their foreign policy. And I am sure many people will respect both Stephen Harper and Michael Ignatieff for taking such a bipartisan approach to help our hard-pressed allies.

That said, both leaders are equally wrong in not seeking a full debate before Parliament before setting us down this path.

As flawed as it is, Parliament is still the only venue that can represent the entire country and set out the pros and cons of such a change in direction, particularly when it regards a conflict that is now veering off into such dangerous waters.