Obama-McChrystal Rift

Wonderful.

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.

...An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."

General McChrystal is obviously in a tough political position here. He was sent by this administration to carry out a specific strategy and now that that same administration is backing away from that policy. The general is not only fighting terrorists in Afghanistan but a weak willed "leadership" at home.

Here's the problem, Obama has the right to be weak willed and to change his mind. It's the nature of civilian control of the military. Once Obama makes his decision, General McChrystal is going to have to decide if he can, in good conscience and consistent with his sense of duty live with it.

This really ends in one of a few ways...Obama approves a troop increase in which case General McChrystal stays and carries out the mission he was sent to do or Obama bails on 'the war that must be won'. If it's the latter Obama may fire McChrystal to show who is boss or McChrystal may bail before that.

And while Obama considers his options, the Taliban continue the war.

Hundreds of insurgents armed with automatic rifles and rocket-propelled grenades stormed a pair of remote outposts near the Pakistan border, killing eight U.S. troops and capturing more than 20 Afghan security troops in the deadliest assault against U.S. forces in more than a year, military officials said Sunday.

The fierce gunbattle, which erupted at dawn Saturday in the Kamdesh district of mountainous Nuristan province and raged throughout the day, is likely to fuel the debate in Washington over the direction of the troubled eight-year war.

It was the heaviest U.S. loss of life in a single battle since July 2008, when nine American troops were killed in a raid on an outpost in Wanat in the same province.

And two more Americans were killed in a separate attack.

Obama must be wondering why things can't just stop in Afghanistan so he can eat his policy waffles.

posted by DrewM. at 10:42 AM

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