Afghan War: Is this a joke?

From the Guardian (UK) 03/30/04 (my emphasis):

The [British] government is to announce that 100 more soldiers are to be sent to Afghanistan as part of an ambitious Nato plan to try to pacify the entire country and clamp down on warlords.

The British will lead a multinational Northern Group, defence sources said. British troops initially operated only in the capital, Kabul. Last year, they extended their field of operation to Mazar-i-Sharif, in northern Afghanistan, and are now to expand to another northern town.

A few thousand NATO troops are not going to pacify the country of Afghanistan. And look at the second paragraph. The NATO force controls the capital city, more or less. Not the Afghan Army, which hardly exists in reality, but NATO. Then in 2003, British troops "extended their field of operation" to another city.

Spain just announced it was sending some additional troops to boost NATO in Afghanistan.

But how long can the EU governments keeping justifying even the intervention in Afghanistan to their publics? The huge US commitment to Iraq means that the US can't commit to a serious nationwide guerrilla war against the Taliban, al-Qaeda and the various warlords on which we've depended up to know to be our allies of the moment in the rest of the country outside Kabul.

When does a war that can't achieve a meaningful objective - that can't be won without a major expansion of available forces - stop making sense?

For now, as Spain's action shows, supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan functions well as an alibi for EU government's against the charge of being anti-American. But I just don't see how it can last much longer without some major progress in establishing a national government in Afghanistan that can provide real security in most of the country.