He needed to not look soft on fighting terrorism but of course he could not support Bush's hated war in Iraq so he decided to make the political decision to support Afghanistan as the "good war" so now he owns it. The problem is Afghanistan may be unwinnable in a time frame of less 10 years (that is ten more not two more) and there is little political will in this country to lose more lives and more money to secure one of the most worthless places on the globe. So now he has a very difficult central front on terrorism his own party doesn’t want to fight.

Whatever Obama is going to do he needs to do it soon. We need to either pull back and just strike training camps from the air or we need to put enough troops in to control the area. We had a near disaster this weekend and almost had an outpost overrun with bad guys actually making it inside the perimeter.

Here is the nightmare scenario that we could see if things keep going like they are. If we continue to send guys and tell them to control the area but give the them to few men we risk getting one of these outpost truly overrun run and then we are screwed. Having one 80 man outpost overrun is not significant from a strategic point of view since they could never hold it but the political fallout would be staggering. If they manage to move twenty or so American POWs back across the border into Pakistan then what? Invade Pakistan? Negotiate with the Taliban and do so from a position of weakness? Leave them there? It would be ten times worse the Somalia.

I don't agree that McChrystal's opinion is the only one the matters, that privilege would be Obama's cross to bear. You can't half fight a war, you either fight it to win or don't spend the lives and treasure. If Obama doesn't trust McChrystal's judgment he needs to can him and put someone in place he does have faith in. To leave McChrystal in charge and deny him the troops he thinks he needs would be simply stupid.