Bob Woodward strikes again! (McChrystal assessment edition)

Foreign Policy ^ | 9/21/2009 | Peter Feaver

[Saije]

The Obama Administration has been Woodwarded again, this time with a major scoop: Bob Woodward has a major front-page story that is more or less a summary precis of General McChrystal’s confidential Initial Assessment of the Afghan situation...I have a few initial assessments of my own:

1. It is not good to have a document like this leaked into the public debate before the President has made his decision...I assume the Obama team is very angry about this, and I think they have every right to be...

4. The leak makes it harder for President Obama to reject a McChrystal request for additional troops because the assessment so clearly argues for them...Presumably, the McChrystal assessment and request is shared by Petraeus and, I am told, also by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That does not make it irrefutably correct, but it does make this issue now the defining moment in civil-military relations under President Obama’s watch...

5. The toughest part in the report from the point of view of the Obama White House is the twin claim that (i) under-resourcing the war could cause the war to be lost, and (ii) the resources need to show up in the next year. The former puts the responsibility for success/failure squarely on the desk of the President and the latter, because of the long lead times needed to send additional resources into the theater, says that failure could result from choices made or not made in the next few weeks. And it said that a few weeks ago...

The domestic political-military stakes have been ramped up considerably with this leak. It is not quite a 3-AM-phone-call crisis, but it is probably the most serious national security test the Obama team has confronted thus far...

[freethinker_for_freedom]

“he wants to blame Bush for the results...”

There was an easy way for Bush to avoid blame for losing the war—by winning it while he was in office. After eight years of directing the war he left Afghanistan in such a state that even after the addition of 20,000 troops, the US and NATO forces were on the verge of defeat just eight months after he left office.

Just as Nixon could not overcome eight years of mistakes made by JFK and LBJ in Vietnam, any president, and certainly an incompetent one such as Hussein, would have a difficult time winning in Afghanistan today.