U.S. Commanding General in Afghanistan Tells the President Which Orders to Give

There's no other way to interpret this:

He was speaking in Britain — America’s close ally in Afghanistan — a day after he had participated by video link from London in a White House strategy session on the war that included President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an array of senior advisers.

General McChrystal was asked by a member of an audience that included retired military commanders and security specialists whether he would support an idea put forward by Mr. Biden to scale back the American military presence in Afghanistan to focus on tracking down the leaders of Al Qaeda, in place of the current broader effort now under way to defeat the Taliban.

“The short answer is: no,” he said. “You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”

He did not mention Mr. Biden by name.

Right now the White House is engaged in a strategic review of its options in Afghanistan and Pakistan. That review has just gotten underway and is expected to take some time to complete, but McChrystal's statement, if left as is, narrows the range of possible options. The statement is an attempt to tie President Obama's hands by publicly announcing which strategic goals are acceptable and which are not. If Obama decides to support Biden's idea, then Republicans will seize on McChrystal's statement as proof that Obama is undermining American security. 

McChrystal must retract his statement or be removed from his position. If SecDef Gates lets this slide, we'll end up with a decades-long commitment to a war for no reason other than the generals like fighting it.

Comments

[zenpundit]

" a day after he had participated by video link from London in a White House strategy session on the war that included President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an array of senior advisers"

Disagree. I realize the Left is hopping up and down about this but this situation isn't like Adm. Fallon who freelanced his comments to my friend Tom Barnett and was duly fired by Gates, who has zero tolerance for nonsense. McChrystal's appearance to an important audience like that one was something that would be pre-approved by DoD and State/WH, and very likely discussed either at the strategy session itself or afterwards with Gates and Petraeus as to what could and could not be said. I'm very dubious that McChrystal "winged" those comments.More likely he was given talking points by CENTCOM or OSD.

I suspect the WH is having key players lay out cases for different options. Holbrooke is "COIN on steroids nation-building", McChrystal is COIN (really COIN plus Counterterrorism), Biden is Light Footprint-Counterterrorism. I expect somebody, probably Hillary to offer up "regional talks and status quo" very soon.

The reason for all this kabuki is that we have no real strategy for dealing with Af/Pak/India or with al Qaida. McChrystal should be planning a *campaign* within a strategy he's given, he's too junior a figure to devise a strategy for the USG. It's like FDR in 1944 asking one of Eisenhower's subordinates to come up with a war plan for the US to fight WWII.

[Mithras]

Okay, that sounds plausible and makes me feel better, weirdly enough. Better to think they're flailing than undermining civilian control over the armed forces.

Hell if I know what the answer is or should be to the question, "What the hell are we doing in Afghanistan and Pakistan and why?" It's a major clusterfuck,

[Glomarization]

Looks as though McChrystal got woodshedded.