It's a good article, although I would keep in mind that "keeping in mind that generals may not always be right" is not really that helpful of advice. How often are they wrong or right? We can praise Roosevelt for this, but then we have counter-examples of leaders over-ruling the military leadership in the form of Churchill's constant pushing for an Italian invasion, Hitler's bad decision-making, and Saddam's bad decision-making in the Iran-Iraq War.

Of course, the conflict in Afghanistan isn't World War II.

No sh*t, Sherlock. (Forgive me, but I'm loaded for bear today). Save your virtually meaningless historical analogies and explain your critique of Obama's decision-making process directly. BTW, nice choice of WWII over Vietnam, nothing like pumping up escalation by invoking the "good war."

1) Okay, how do you politically justify tens of thousands of more troops and higher causality rates due to increased action when the American people don't believe in this war right now?

2-3)
a) Who said anything about Iraq? We're withdrawing from there and they must have a rotation plan in place already.

b) And as far as Afghan goes, the target date for more troops is spring. You can't open outposts in the mountains in the winter.

c) This case is a separate decision from March, which was actually a campaign promise anyway, not a rigorous debate with all experts at the table. Just what are you saying - Obama has to decide to send more troops because of past actions?

d) Obama does need to bring along the American people, but to support an escalation, not preserving the status quo.

e) The military will be told what to do. The intimation that Obama is a hen-pecked husband - especially in regard to the military - is obscene.

4) Whoever leaked McChrystal's report was actively trying to undermine Obama, they wanted to make it harder on him to refuse to escalate. They wanted 40,000 troops, the report's Goldilocks option, sent to Afghanistan.

don't seem to get here.

Number one is that this extended deliberation, in addition to being necessary and appropriate, is itself also a public relations posture specifically designed to garner maximum public support for the eventual decision. it appears to be working, judging by the latest numbers from your former outlet.

You tick off the second misconception perfectly in your own words: "In this case, I thought President Obama had made his decision back in March, and so did a lot of officers. He has some 'splaining to do to the military and to the American people." Well, he'd have plenty of 'splaining to do no matter what -- he's the president of the United States. Apart from that, however, yes, he clearly made some decisions in March, but I would have thought it would be unnecessary to make explicit that any assumption that as a result subsequent decisions with regard to resources or even revisions of strategy were foregone conclusions would be patently absurd. All options available must remain open to any commander. A six-month status review in the face of a 60% troop increase proposal that was by no means presumptively to be met in full seems like the height of prudence to me and to many Americans. Gen. McChrystal seems clearly to understand this: he has been nothing but formally supportive of the process itself even while exerting public pressure on it to move it in a particular direction. A decision is needed for the reasons you point out in the piece, but as you say it should come neither before nor too much after the president feels the review is complete.

With respect your admonition that decisions not be revisited, implicitly comparing the current situation unfavorably to the Torch debate, this is a poor comparison for two reasons. Firstly, the Torch debate resulted in a decision to attack Hitler in N. Africa. Well, you can't revisit an attack: it's done. You have to make the most of the course you chose. In this case,on the other hand, very little that is irreversible has occurred since March (not that a major reversal is on the table here in any case). A forty-thousand troop escalation, on the other hand is most definitely an irreversible step, and thus clearly indicates renewed examination on the part of policymakers.

Secondly, FDR was fully established as president and had full freedom of action politically with respect to how to open U.S. engagement in the war. The March 2009 process was quite clearly a politically driven exercise where a new president was trying to be accountable for campaign rhetoric with regard to an ongoing war. It was not in any way a fulsome reflection of a commander's considered judgment. (This probably merits some criticism, but it's not what you're criticizing him for now: rather you now upbraid him for wisely revisiting that early, rushed, and, in his defense openly tentative first draft.) This was obvious at the time, and the only reason you see that process as something that should limit the president's options today is because you closely associate yourself with the approach he embraced at the time.

In conclusion, I'd suggest you might ask yourself the following to gain perspective on the nature of your critique of the president thus far: if the president had preliminarily embraced a strategy with which you strongly disagreed back in march and was now revisiting it, would you be saying that his process of deliberation on the question was calling into doubt your otherwise strong support for him? Are you sure you support the principle behind this criticism of the president for being certain of strategy before moving ahead with an irreversible step? What if it could be shown that, whatever your view of it, this seemingly Hamlet-like deliberation actually cemented public support for the effort in the long run?

Why are we still in Afghanistan?

When you've answered that, then tackle why we need 40,000 more troops.

... the dithering.

1. We have the people who are pressing the troop increase etc. saying they are NOT confident it will work--Exum on Frontline, eg--only saying, they think it's worth a shot.

2. We have an impossible-ro-seal border with Pakistan.

3. We have Pakistan on the verge of who knows what, threatening to suck us in, or else remain a powerful destabilizer.

4. We do not have the American people behind us, and in my opinion I do not think there's ANYTHING that Obama can do to win their support for the war. (People support wars when they think they'll be quick and painless. No one's saying that and if they tried the entire nation would, in unison, throw their shoes at them.)

5. We're where Clark Clifford found us to be when he took over from McNamara: we're basically alone on this one. (No offense to all who are serving, but does anyone see significant NATO additions forthcoming?)

Those are some powerful inhibitors.

Imagine we do surge, it fails, we withdraw. Imagine it's 2030 and a 21 year-old college student is writing her term paper about the failed Afghanistan War, 2001-2014. How's the decision to surge of 2009 going to look then?

We fault the deciders back in 'Nam days for just kicking the can down the road, despite similar warning signs, and we say they should have known better. How's this different?