The summary sacking of General David McKiernan as the American commander in Afghanistan after only 11 months is a sure sign that things are not going well there – for the US or anyone else except the Taliban. Simon Tisdall points out that there are questions surrounding the decision; some would say it is a sign of panic in Washington about the impasse now developing in America's longest war since Vietnam.

It has certainly not encouraged McKiernan's peers in the military, who liked and even respected the man and his skills. Only last month McKiernan was nominated as the only soldier in Time Magazine's Top 100 most influential people for 2009. Ironically he was written up by General Wes Clark, the former Nato commander and Democrat presidential hopeful, who was also booted out after political altercations in Washington, though in his case it was the tangle over Kosovo that brought him down.

Announcing the removal from command, defence secretary Robert Gates bluntly declared it time for "fresh thinking" and "fresh eyes" on Afghanistan. His replacement is to be Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, former head of special operations command, with Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, who has commanded in eastern Afghanistan, as his deputy.

The message is clearly that the mix of tactics and weaponry used so far hasn't worked. In seven and a half years the Taliban have grown in strength and now have more than a toehold in the key provinces across the south of Afghanistan. There are now serious worries that it may not be possible to hold full, free and fair elections for the presidency on 20 August. The propagandists of the Taliban and al-Qaida know how damaging this is to the US message of bringing security and governance to the region.

The US has started the process of doubling its forces in Afghanistan to 68,000 by midsummer. So far this doesn't appear to be yielding much in terms of gains on the ground. Instead there is heavy reliance on air strikes, particularly by unmanned Reaper and Predator aircraft, for taking out "key command" cells of the Taliban and al-Qaida. The recent strike in the western province of Farra is reported to have killed 120 civilians – though the US has claimed the figures have been "exaggerated by Taliban propaganda".

The Farra attack so upset the presidents of Afghanistan and Pakistan that during their recent visit to Washington they asked President Obama to reconsider the use of Predator strikes altogether. The Americans have countered with the argument that while there has been a certain amount of collateral damage in the killing of civilians, the Predators have successfully taken out some key al-Qaida and Taliban field commanders.

Obama now seems to have switched to using special forces more – both the new generals, McChrystal and Rodriguez, have a strong SF record. The UK's defence secretary, John Hutton, also wants to expand the numbers and use of special forces, as he told the House of Commons defence committee last month. This would involve expanding 22 Regiment SAS by 5-10% – which army commanders say would be difficult without seriously reducing the quality of the individual SAS trooper and his training. It has also been suggested that all three battalions of the Parachute Regiment now become part of a special forces command – again which some army experts, including some from the Paras, are not in favour.

The kind of argument being put forward by Hutton, like the thinking behind the replacement of McKiernan, seems to focus on tactics and techniques and not the central strategic issue itself. Afghanistan and Pakistan are now problems of which the Americans and their allies have only part ownership and a part share. These countries will be sorted out, in whatever way, by their own people. This still seems to be only partially recognised in London and Washington. This is why there is an eerie echo of the early days of the Vietnam crisis in the latest crop of policy pronouncements, particularly by Gordon Brown after his return from the region the week before last. In saying we are going to put in shoals of "experts" and "advisers" and special forces trainers puts us in Saigon circa 1963, the year of the assassination of the Catholic president Ngo Diem. Following this, Kennedy started sending in the experts and advisers, and began the commitment of forces to America's longest war to date.

Clear appreciation of the facts on the ground seems elusive now as it was then in Vietnam. This week America, Britain and Australia's favourite expert on counterinsurgency methods and tactics, David Kilcullen, has been in London promoting his book The Accidental Guerrilla. His work with General Petraeus in Iraq and his book have won high praise. Speaking at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, he had a strange prescription for tackling the Taliban insurgency in the north-west of Pakistan and in particular in the Swat valley. He said that the Pakistan army should be "pushed into the background" as they had no counterinsurgency doctrine and training. Instead the paramilitary, national and provincial police should be strengthened and brought to the fore.

Scarcely unnoticed by the distinguished academic and civil service audience, we had stepped into military strategy and doctrine scripted by Lewis Carroll. Criticise the Pakistan army, fine, but "push them to the background"? The army is one of the few institutions that holds Pakistan together, and for many, like it or not, it is Pakistan.