Between Gates, Jones, Petraeus, the JCS and phone talks with McChrystal, it is most probable Obama know what is on all their minds. A public relations stunt of flying McChrystal back to Washington might be fodder for the bloggers but probably would be a waste of both their time.

Obama has made the worst mistake a politician can make which was to leave himself too little room for maneuver. His reckless campaign rhetoric designed for one purpose has now turned around and bitten him in the butt. If he escalates he looks weak and foolish, if he pulls the plug he looks the spineless hypocrite. Either way he comes off inept and clueless.

First,having the general on his plane didn't need to be a publicity stunt. He could have put his feet up and had a heart-to-heart with the guy.

Second, I think his campaign rhetoric may have boxed him in a bit, but he closed the lid on the box when he agreed to a strategy in March. Now he is trying to climb out of it.

Best,
Tom

Jeez, Tom, you read a lot into a little. As many others have pointed out there are a couple of guys in the chain of command between Obama and McChrystal. Even as a lowly first- and second-level manager in government and the "beltway bandit" world I've always been reluctant to jump down the chain. You run the risk of confusing an individual with regard to what his immediate boss expects of him.

Maybe Obama doesn't want to use Rumsfeld's "six thousand mile screwdriver" approach and actually trusts his COCOMs to do their job without checking in with him every day.

"War President"? Yeah. Like LBJ?

If there is anything Gen. McCrystal is thinking that President Obama does not know about now, it is bound to leak within the next couple of days.

Is Obama's problem here that he is dithering now, or that he acted too hastily when he agreed to fire Gen. McKiernan and give McChrystal the Afghanistan command?

That McChrystal is a fine combat commander I have no question, and if we wanted to make a state of Afghanistan -- not just a modern state, but an American state -- he might be just the guy to start the job. The record suggests that his fired predecessor was also a fine combat commander, we do not want to make Afghanistan the 51st state, and McChrystal's very detailed and specific ideas about what he means by counterinsurgency seem to vary somewhat from Obama's understanding. McChrystal would have to represent an awfully big step up from his predecessor to make up for his drawbacks. Maybe he does, but how exactly this was true wasn't clear to me when he got the job and isn't clear to me now.

Our tactical limits have strategic ramifications. How much men/material can McChrystal's command absorb and supply, and task, before Winter closes the fighting/driving season for the year?

How much uncommitted lift is available for deployment, that is suitable for flight between 6-15,000 ft, to clear the passes between bases? Are we going to supply Obama's war with Rooshun contractors? A privatized 40th Army air wing as contract liberators, while our infantry forgoes unrestricted force protection air/art'y support? How's that working out?

It's not yet proven that we represent a cause the Afghan Army and police are willing to fight in sufficient numbers. Or that we/NATO are now competent to train them, in year 8 of this war.

If our relationship with Karzai's warlords is wonky, and supply thru Pakistan has drifted off course since March, then maybe the plan ought to be rethunk, and the commitment of our main force rescheduled. Weren't we overdue a force reset, before Petraeus' counteroffensive put it off another 3 years?

In spite of the loose threads in Iraq, our odds of near-term strategic success in the oil heartlands are looking better than far Pashtunistan right now. Once we commit the balance of our infantry to AfPak, our leverage in Baghdad and Mosul tips towards 'not enough'.

Obama needs to spend uninterrupted time with McChrystal. In 25 minutes, Obama may have just excoriated him for disagreeing so strongly with Biden and not really had a meaningful conversation.
I'd like to hear more about Holbrooke's views -- seems he's lying low, avoiding accountability here. Probably supports McChrystal, as does Hillary.
I haven't seen how McChrystal calculates how to spread additional troops around so that they're not too thinly placed in a large country, but one has to emphasize that AlQ and the Taliban may want to suck more US troops into the quagmire, and continue to weaken the US military.

"Even war mafia hagiographer Tom Ricks admits that Gen. David Petraeus never intended to bring the Iraq war to a conclusion, but merely wanted to convince Congress and the American public to let the war continue by artificially lowering violence levels in that country through bribery."

"It turns out that one of the primary tank thinkers who helped McChrystal crank out his assessment was Fred Kagan, the neoconservative superstar who brought us the surge in Iraq. Two years and change into its execution the Iraq surge is a strategic cesspool."

"McChrystal’s report is a compendium of the same sort of gibberish that got us embroiled in the Iraq fiasco. Eight years after we first fumbled our efforts in Afghanistan, the neocons lament, it may become a failed state if we don’t send more troops and money there now, now, now. Afghanistan has been a failed state since Alexander the Great drove through it. McChrystal says that "overwhelming firepower" is not the solution to the Afghanistan situation, yet he and Kagan are asking for more firepower."

Jeff Huber

?

Is that meant tongue-in-cheek? I understand you are moving toward sharp disapproval of Obama's handling of the situation, but you relinquish your credibility for judging his performance when you jump so easily and without explanation to such surpassingly grave assessments as that he is not serious about the conduct of an active war. Who exactly do you think you are?

I'll check back in here when you get a hold of yourself.

Take a deep breath Tom. Right now they are figuring out what to do and it ain't easy. The general is one of many stake holders Obama needs to talk to. But as many here have said, there is a chain of command and there really isn't a need to talk to the guy directly at all. How often did FDR talk to Eisenhower and for how long? Wasn't George Marshall in between them? Aren't there military and civillians between Obama and McChrystal?

As is increasingly often the case here you are having what appears to be a hissy fit over something that may or may not be a good or bad thing but seems to offend you personally. I thought you were a journalist, not a strategist. The the pols politic, and the generals command. And you can write about it and offer opinions, but you are doing what so much of the DC journalistic establishment does; concentrating of process when you really ought to spend more time looking at strategy and the tactical methods that are used to achieve the aims of the given strategy.

Tom: Any thoughts on this piece in the Post?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/02/AR2009100203939.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Several commenters here have raised the possibility that Obama was reaming Stan a new one for acting more like Dugout Doug MacArthur than a loyal and recently hired subordinate commander.

I guess the generals know everything and the pols know nothing - that seems to be your take at any rate. What would Clemenceau think?

McChrystal’s job is to execute military strategy as given him, not to formulate national security policy for the Commander in Chief. As a source of deck-plate-level information, the President should take the time he thinks he needs to learn more of the situation and McChrystal’s view of it, but the policy and national-strategy interface with the President is with Secretary Gates, not a field commander.

The tendency to put the military leaders forward as all-knowing in policy matters badly reads their role in national defense (and their level of knowledge and understanding outside military matters, BTW). They are subordinate to the political leadership and civilian control of the military is not an option to be disposed of in time of conflict.

This basic stuff. Tom, you're getting this wrong most of the time.

There is no possibility in the foreseeable future of changes in US war policies abroad or at home, no matter who occupies the White House or which party has the majorities in Congress.

The US economy is locked into high military budgets, because our manufacturing base has largely been eviscerated; it has been moved overseas or has been destroyed by foreign competition. Too many Americans are either employed by "defense" or own small businesses dependent on "defense", one way or another. There is no way to end US militarism without much greater economic pain than what we are even now experiencing.

Until there is a catastrophic collapse of the system whereby we borrow money from exporters of consumer goods (China, et al.), the current politics will continue. Even stagnation in Iraq and Af-Pak will not change anything. Indeed, if we suddenly found ourselves as in 1989, without a major enemy, we should have to invent one (again?)

The idea that this is a democracy is a folly that one must discard. We are ruled by a corporate-elite who determine, through campaign funding, who is electable. The constituencies are not voters in various districts. They are the lobbies that represent the corporate ruling class. The politicians, except for a handful, are corrupted. Congress and the White House are corrupted by our system of campaign finance.

For all the reasons above and others unstated, a young person who has talents and training that enable him to live in another country would be very wise to do as our forefathers did: go to where the opportunity for a good life is better. Our forebears did not stay in class ridden, war torn Europe. They emigrated, a painful process - leaving family and friends for a new country, possibly a different language and customs. The truth is there is no choice.

The Afghan Strategy discussion is becoming a classic civilian-military showdown. "Civilians dictate; generals obey" while understood in our democracy is in fact a much more complicated dance of competing values and interests which also includes the political environment. Sadly, political considerations are slipping in - from both sides. First, someone with an agenda "leaked" the McChystal assessment to WaPo's Woodword. This was a calculated move to reduce the White House's "political space" to manuver on McChyrstal's report. Why isn't there more concern over this breach?

Second, the COIN supporters with roots back to the original Surge continue to have considerable "behind the scene" influence on the current strategy and discussion. See Kelley Vlahos piece this week at

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/10/02/gates-expected-to-back-afghan-escalation/

Forgive my American Gov't 101: The Commander in Chief has the responsibility to make the call he/she believes is in the country's best interest. McChrystal's comments and the leak have not been conducive for a calm analysis and possible reformulation of strategy. Instead, we have a slow boiling political battle with consequences of creating a poor Executive-military relationship similar to Clinton's poor relationship with the military inaugrated over his "don't ask, don't tell" fight early in his new administration.

I fear ideological partisanship is leaking into this important discussion. The possible commitment of immense blood and treasure in a high risk strategy requires the most nonpartisan discussion possible because an unfeasible strategy will bleed us unneccessarily as it did in our uncritical and misbegotten adventure in Iraq. Simply, America can't get this wrong this time.

Excuse me: This is the Vlahos piece I intended:

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2009/09/28/two-faces-of-kimberly-kagan/

Mr. Ricks, your indulgent attitude toward military hot-dogging is alarming. It was bad enough that McChrystal's insolent London gambit succeeded in winning him a personal European visit from the President of the United States. Now you want Obama to reward the general further by inviting him for a high-profile return to Washington aboard the presidential barge.

McChrystal was heavily involved via video conference in last week's Afghanistan strategy meeting at the White House. There is no reason to think McChrystal is not being given ample opportunity to make his case directly through appropriate channels. He would do well to confine his reporting to the established chain of command, and stop trying to subvert established processes.

If Obama had not gone to support Chicago for the Olympics, he would have been roasted by the right wingers for not supporting America. If Obama does not support the focused, counterterrorism strategy, he will be blamed for any next homeland attack. He must have known that Chicago would not win, just as he may now know that the US cannot win in Afghanistan or Iraq. But he's not going to be caught "not supporting America".
Susan Rice summed up the the US strategy yesterday -- "Protect the American people/homeland" -- whereas McChrystal' s strategy is "Protect the (Afghan) people". Obama will set priorities - the Pakistan situation cannot be allowed to disintegrate, and AlQ bases will be targeted everywhere.