In June, McChrystal noted, he had arrived in Afghanistan and set about fulfilling his assignment. His lean face, hovering on the screen at the end of the table, was replaced by a mission statement on a slide: "Defeat the Taliban. Secure the Population."
"Is that really what you think your mission is?" one of those in the Situation Room asked.
On the face of it, it was impossible -- the Taliban were part of the fabric of the Pashtun belt of southern Afghanistan, culturally if not ideologically supported by a significant part of the population. "We don't need to do that," Gates said, according to a participant. "That's an open-ended, forever commitment."
But that was precisely his mission, McChrystal responded, and it was enshrined in the Strategic Implementation Plan -- the execution orders for the March strategy, written by the NSC staff.
"I wouldn't say there was quite a 'whoa' moment," a senior defense official said of the reaction around the table. "It was just sort of a recognition that, 'Duh, that's what, in effect, the commander understands he's been told to do.' Everybody said, 'He's right.' "
"It was clear that Stan took a very literal interpretation of the intent" of the NSC document, said Jones, who had signed the orders himself. "I'm not sure that in his position I wouldn't have done the same thing, as a military commander." But what McChrystal created in his assessment "was obviously something much bigger and more longer-lasting . . . than we had intended."
This is what you get for promoting Amateur Hour in the White House. This is what you get when you put an empty suit in charge of the military. This is what you get when a "community organizer" plays grown-up. As Allahpundit at Hot Air states:
So it goes for our supposedly Spock-like president, who made such a pageant during the the past three months of deliberating over Afghanistan lest he waste time and lives by rashly adopting the wrong strategy. He wanted to show his commitment to the war early on, so he installed McChrystal, handed him 22,000 extra troops, stuck him with orders he either didn’t think carefully about or didn’t believe were feasible (Bush-lite?), and then forgot about it for half a year while he went off to chase his health-care dreams. Even more surreally, the only way McChrystal could have misunderstood the orders is if he’d had so little contact with people at the top — Obama, Gates, and Jones — that the occasion never arose for them to clarify that “defeat the Taliban” actually meant “degrade the Taliban.” Remember in September when he said he’d only had one teleconference with The One since taking over in Afghanistan in June? I guess this is the result. Question: How come closing Gitmo was such an urgent priority that Obama sent down the word literally two days after his inauguration, but appointing McChrystal and getting him started on a full strategic review — which would necessarily take weeks — had to wait until late March?
At this point I want to find all the frikkin' Obama voters and just ask them "Hey, why do you hate the military so much? Did we not live up to your expectations or something? Why would you do this to us?" But that might lead to me beating at least one of them to death with their own limbs, so it might be better for me if I didn't do that. But still..... the incompetence of the Obama administration is on display here yet again. There isn't a damn thing they've gotten right.
Riddle me this: Just what the hell am I supposed to say to a Soldier getting shipped to Afghanistan, when we both know that that the Commander in Chief is nothing more than a brainless idiot who's completely incapable of performing his duties as such?
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