McChrystal’s Conundrum

Is the Afghan war already lost? Well, not quite, says the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, but almost:

“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.”

That’s the gist of a memo [.pdf] sent to the White House by Gen. Stanley McChrystal, which was leaked to Bob Woodward and published – with “unclassified ” stamped all over it – in redacted form (redacted, according to Woodward, “at the request of the government”). The fact that it was leaked is receiving far more attention than the actual content, as everyone tries to decipher who leaked it and why. The conventional explanation is the simplest: it was leaked by someone who supports McChrystal’s position – more troops, more resources, more casualties – in order to back the president into a corner. Then there are those who speculate this was a “reverse leak,” i.e., someone was trying to get the president mad at the general for presumably having something to do with the leak. Not to forget the “fake leak” theory, whose adherents accuse the administration itself of being the source of the leak: the assumption being they’re trying to back themselves into a corner and cut short any congressional debate. Read the rest of this entry »