Army General McChrystal’s Frustration With Obama’s Afghanistan “Strategy”

Hat Tip to Bill Roggio at The Long War Journal.

On the heels of General McCrystal’s Afghanistan assessment, (http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/general_mccrystals_report_on_a.php) members of his staff think he would resign if Obama doesn’t come across with the troops he needs to accomplish the mission.

Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it. In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion “premature.” Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “time is not on our side”; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public “to take a deep breath.”

……In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly.

Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.
“Yes, he’ll be a good Soldier, but he will only go so far,” a senior official in Kabul said. “He’ll hold his ground. He’s not going to bend to political pressure.”
Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/threat-matrix/archives/2009/09/mcchrystal_to_resign_if_not_gi.php

I’ll repeat what I’ve said in a previous post: In spite of inheriting a winning hand in Iraq and Afghanistan, Obama has no intention of winning. He stated emphatically that “victory isn’t necessarily the United States’ goal”.

He blows off the external threats from Iran and Pakistan and is pathetically indecisive.

This war is not to nation build Afghanistan, but to destroy our sworn enemies where ever they hide.
Afghanistan has several religious sects and a host of different ethnic, linguistic, and tribal groups.
They are territorial and don’t like outsiders. And unfortunately, Hamid Karzai’s corrupt government is not fulfilling expectations.
President Punchdrunk is in way over his head. He has no idea how to manage the business of fighting the nations wars. To cut and run would give Islamofascists the ‘hope and change’ they’re looking for, and pave the way for a global resurgence in mass terrorism.

To stay and finish the job, along with erradicating the terrorists in Pakistan, would further anger the anti-war crowd who want us to give up and walk away from rabid zealots who want to bludgeon the entire world with the ‘peaceful religion of Islam’.

Gee, what’s a salaaming Dhimmi to do?