When Biden is Rumsfeld

Gen. McChrystal is getting ahead of the DC debate, overstepping his bounds, as he gave the President and the SecDef his "best military advice." He should now wait for the folks back there to decide and be careful about answering questions too bluntly in London.

Having said that, I find what he said to be largely true. That the go small option and just to counter-terrorism option as apparently espoused by VP Biden is not a promising way ahead. Indeed, isn't this what Rumsfeld was doing from 2002-2006? Indeed, in the Dave and Steve project on Afghanistan, we (Dave) learned that Rumsfeld only got interested in Afghanistan in 2004-ish when the US general was doing more than CT but COIN, and Rummy pulled him back. The current talk about just doing counter-terrorism and let Afghanistan rot (not quite what they say) is quite problematic for a variety of reasons, with most obvious one that CT requires intel, and that comes from the locals.

Meanwhile, Marc Lynch suggests muddling through might be the answer. That might not a politically sustainable stance, but it is pretty realistic. The challenge to Obama is that if he does give the additional 40,000 troops or whatever is not so much that decision, bu the next one when he is asked for another set of reinforcements. I think the hesitation and deliberation now is mostly about anticipating that next request. And doing due diligence.

No good choices. So a very interesting moment in time. I do think that McChystral's emphasis on the next year is interesting. As I have said here before, the current level of violence might be partly election-produced and partly an effect of the surge of Americans into the south--more targets and more operations. So, if it were up to me, I would wait the end of next summer to make any irrevocable decisions. Sending 40k troops now might not be a bad bridge to the next decision point. Not a great one either.