There are some refreshing aspects to McChrystal's assessment. But even so he seems blind to the assumed and ill-defined categories: insurgents, terrorists, the Afghans, more vaguely "Afghans", and "we" who have a huge longterm mission there for which more soldiers are needed, and who Wardak assures us are not seen as "occupiers".

To what extent should success be seen as something political achieved in the US more or less independent of what's actually happening in Afghanistan.

Ironically, even the pre-existing criteria of the defense establishment suggest it's time to get out:

Weinberger Doctrine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

1. The United States should not commit forces to combat unless the vital national interests of the United States or its allies are involved.
2. U.S. troops should only be committed wholeheartedly and with the clear intention of winning. Otherwise, troops should not be committed.
3. U.S. combat troops should be committed only with clearly defined political and military objectives and with the capacity to accomplish those objectives.
4. The relationship between the objectives and the size and composition of the forces committed should be continually reassessed and adjusted if necessary.
5. U.S. troops should not be committed to battle without a "reasonable assurance" of the support of U.S. public opinion and Congress.
6. The commitment of U.S. troops should be considered only as a last resort.

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

What I think will make this a hard sell in the troop-sending countries is that fact that McC's strategy is militarily neither offensive (maximized enemy killed) nor (defensive) minimize own troops killed, but just "we'll put our guys on the streets and let the insurgents take their best shot" - which as McC admits is going to up casualties substantially.

This is going to do wonders for support at home...

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine - Patti Smith

VOA News - Report: Pentagon Urges Top US General in Afghanistan to Delay Call for Troops

A major U.S. newspaper is reporting that the Pentagon has told its top commander in Afghanistan to delay submitting a request for additional troops.

The Wall Street Journal quotes defense officials Tuesday saying the Obama administration asked for the delay so it can be sure the U.S. is "using the right strategy" before looking into additional troop requests.

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan has warned that the mission "will likely result in failure" if more troops are not sent within the next year.

But General Stanley McChrystal also says that "while the situation is serious, success is still achievable" if the mission receives proper resources and support throughout the coalition.
 
McChrystal's remarks are part of a strategic assessment that is still officially secret, but The Washington Post published an unclassified version on its Web site Monday.

A D.C. whodunit: Who leaked and why? | Reuters

POLITICO (Washington) - Bob Woodward's Monday-morning exclusive on a 66-page report from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to President Barack Obama about Afghanistan policy was a rite of passage for the new administration: the first major national security leak and a sure sign that the celebrated Washington Post reporter has penetrated yet another administration.

White House officials greeted the leak with a grimace, but none suggested they'd begin a witch hunt for the leaker. Woodward is famous for his access to the principals themselves -- he recently traveled to Afghanistan with National Security Adviser James Jones -- and leak hunters couldn't expect with confidence that they'd find themselves disciplining just an undisciplined junior staffer.

But inside the White House and out, the leak touched off another familiar Washington ritual: speculation about the leaker's identity and motives.

...

The simplest theory -- and one most administration officials Monday were endorsing -- is that a military or civilian Pentagon official who supports McChrystal's policy put it out in an attempt to pressure Obama to follow McChrystal's suggestion and increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

But not everyone in Washington is a believer in Occam's razor, so all manner of other theories flourished.

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure' - washingtonpost.com

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure,"

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

Westmoreland asks for more troops

December 16, 1965

Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, sends a request for more troops. With nearly 200,000 U.S. military personnel in South Vietnam already, Westmoreland sent Defense Secretary Robert McNamara a message stating that he would need an additional 243,000 men by the end of 1966.

"Ce qui vient au monde pour ne rien troubler ne mérite ni égards ni patience." René Char

I really don't know what to say about the military, about what they're trying to do or how well they're doing it.

I actually think there's too much focus on the military, and on their goals, rather than on overall goals of reconstruction, development, peacebuilding, governance, etc.  In other words, people only want to talk about the military, while what's really important here is everything else but the military.

Some would argue that the international forces' presence here obstructs those goals, because they become a target. The fighting follows them.  That is to some degree true, but if they were to leave, I suspect work towards those overall goals would screech to a halt in some parts of the country and then take a flying leap backwards.  So is it bad with the international military forces here?  Yes.  Would it be worse if they left?  Probably also yes.

But I think there are also good, important questions to be asked about those other goals, the overall ones, the ones that the "international community" is working to support through NGOs and multilateral institutions and quasi-military PRTs.  I mean, that's what all this military activity is supposed to be making room for, right?  And nobody's talking about that.

Well, almost nobody:

Veteran journalist (and, coincidentally, my friend, but I'd totally link to this excellent piece anyway) Ellen Knickmeyer, writing on the Foreign Policy blog, asks a lot of the right questions and makes some very important points in Is Afghanistan the New Africa?

But without smarter use of development money, it's a bump in prosperity that will disappear in Afghanistan, and Iraq, as soon as the foreigners do. Billions of dollars in aid have vanished without effect in both countries, thrown away by the hundreds of millions to U.S. contractors, frittered away in programs such as unending trash pickups in Baghdad's Sadr City paid for by the U.S. military's commanders' emergency response program. The trash remains; the commanders have rotated in and out and in; the money spent is gone. The bomb barriers stand to be the physical legacy of the United States' dismal occupations.

In Afghanistan, aid efforts since the invasion have some success stories. They include improvements in health care for Afghans, especially at the clinic level. But the lack of coordination and focus among aid efforts has hurt. So has the United States' military-led insistence on pouring aid into the Taliban-saturated south, to the neglect of central and northern regions that could have more easily been made a bulwark for an Afghan government. Agriculture and other crucial sectors have gotten short shrift.

This next part is important.

For Afghanistan, adherents of the "we broke it, we'll walk away from it" school express their shock, shock, shock at the squandering of development money, and call for Western leaders to wash their hands and consciences of Afghanistan.

Absent smarter handling of all the money while it's still flowing, we may soon be abandoning Afghanistan to the Taliban and other armed factions -- no beer factories, but plenty of opium -- and leaving Afghans, as it were, by the side of the road, selling rat-on-a-stick.

Read the whole thing, really.

I promise, I'm not about to disappear because of the conversation in this diary, but I am going to be offline for a week or so because of work-related travel.

Bye, y'all.  Let me know if you figure out how to fix Afghanistan while I'm gone.

   Unlike the Russians, who imposed a government with an alien ideology, you enabled us to write a democratic constitution and

Abdul Rahim Wardak, Afghan Defence Minister, is having fun.  Now I won't challenge his assertion that Soviet Communism was an "alien ideology"--the fun comes with the easy assumption that free-market "democracy" is not also an alien ideology.  But Mr. Wardak knows his audience--an audience that believes implicitly Afghanis have no aspirations other than to become Walmart shoppers and debt slaves to BoA.  

Next the excuses in advance (in case the failure that is sure to happen, does happen):

we make the problem harder. ISAF is a conventional force that is poorly configured for COIN, inexperienced in local languages and culture,

 
What?  We needed to know something about the people we are trying to occupy?  How unexpected!  How unfair!  The Brits never did anything like that--I mean--who knew?  

Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces

That's the kind of thing commanders say when they have given up on tactical goals and are fighting their way out of an encirclement!  But maybe there are no tactical goals . . .  

we have operated in a manner that distances us -- physically and psychologically -- from the people we seek to protect

 
Yeah, waging war on people does tend to do that, whether you are trying to "protect them" or no.  

security may not come from the barrel of a gun.

Hallelujah!  Breakout the flowers and beads!  Are we really hearing this from the same guy who just a few years ago was running death-squads in Iraq?

Better force protection may be counterintuitive;

 
There's that "force protection" again!  If the troops cannot protect themselves, what shall we do--send in the NYPD?  

it might come from less armor and less distance from the population.

This must be why we are running more of our missions out of Nevada using remote control aircraft.  

the objective is the will of the people

 For a military mission this has one meaning, for a diplomatic mission another.  But somehow this sounds like a mere paraphrase of the old Vietnam "winning hearts and minds" thing.  Which in fact turned out to mean putting as many of them in concentration camps as possible.  What could it mean this time around?  

the Afghans must ultimately defeat the insurgency

 It is up to our puppets to fight our wars for us--certainly we can not be expected to do it ourselves!

Obama's strategy to disrupt, dismantle, and eventually defeat al Qaeda and prevent their return to Afghanistan have laid out a clear path

 
Ah!  Now I see the problem:  McChrystal does not know the difference between a goal and a strategy.  Maybe he does not know the difference between an objective and a tactic, either.  How did this guy get promoted out of Black Ops in Baghdad?  

The Fates are kind.