Early Signs Indicate That President Obama Will Not Accept Gen. McChrystal's Afghanistan Assessment

U.S. President Barack Obama (left) meets with Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal at the White House. Photo from Radio Free Europe

From Foreign Policy/The Cable:

As the Obama administration wrestles with how to deal with the worsening military and political situation in Afghanistan and the worsening level of public support for the war at home, new details are emerging about how the president is thinking about his decision on whether to send more U.S. troops to the region.

According to Howard "Buck" McKeon, R-CA, the new top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, Obama told Central Command head Gen. David Petraeus and Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal to "scrub" their assessments because he "wasn't inclined to send troops over there."

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My Comment: Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell remarks that it was Secretary Gates and not President Obama who told General McChrystal to "scrub" his forces to make sure that all of them were being used in the most efficient manner is playing with semantics. Secretary Gates works and serves at the pleasure of the President, and the message that he "passed along" was exactly the message that President Obama wanted him to pass along.

The bottom line is this. U.S. and NATO forces are losing in Afghanistan. They cannot stop the flow of weapons and soldiers from Taliban safe havens in Pakistan .... hell .... they cannot even kick them out of their safe havens in Afghanistan. The reason why is simple. Not enough troops, and the Afghan Army is too weak and corrupt to function as a proper military force.

Gen. McChrystal's request is probably the minimum that he needs to keep the Taliban at bay until the Afghan Army can be shaped up into a functional force. Unfortunately for all of us, President Obama has other priorities. The political capital that he will lose within his own Democrat Party will make pursuing his own domestic agenda next to impossible. Having the choice .... fighting a war in Afghanistan or pursuing his domestic agenda of health care, cap and trade, and financial/economic re-regulation ..... he will dump the war in Afghanistan in a heartbeat. The fact that the majority of Americans want US forces out of Afghanistan will only make his decision easier.

Expect him to sit on the request for additional troops for the next few weeks. With the winter season arriving, and the lull of fighting that occurs, he will then use this time to justify why troops should not be sent to Afghanistan while pursuing his own domestic agenda at full speed. By spring time when the fighting resumes, he can then address the Afghanistan problem more forcefully since much of his domestic agenda was passed in the winter.

Is this the right thing to do .... absolutely not. But war and politics has always been a Washington game, and this President has an agenda that is different from what the commanders on the ground in Afghanistan are saying they need and want.