Things are very fluid on the General McChrystal front at the moment but this suggestion from Bill Kristol strikes me as emblematic of much of what has gone wrong with the debate over Afghanistan:
If Gen. McChrystal does step down, there are undoubtedly many able general officers who could replace him. Hereâ??s one unconventional suggestion, though: Ask Gen. David Petraeus to give up his CENTCOM post and take command of the war in Afghanistan. President Obama should also accept the resignations on the civilian side of special envoy Richard Holbrooke and ambassador Karl Eikenberry; he could then ask Ryan Crocker to come out of retirement to head up the currently dysfunctional civilian effort.
And what will happen? Will Afghanistan suddenly grow governing institutions where none currently existed (Iraq, however dysfunctional and tyrannical under Saddam, had institutions)? Will Pakistan suddenly decide to abandon the Taliban? Will spending hundreds of billions of dollars and committing U.S. soldiers to Afghanistan for another five-plus years make a significant dent in the global jihadist movement?
It seems to me the debate over Afghanistan has become fundamentally unmoored from any discussion of the global terrorist threat. Take all the money, manpower and focus that surge boosters propose to devote to Afghanistan for "however long it takes" until we "win" a very, very modest victory and ask yourself whether that effort and those resources couldn't have a more significant impact on the terror threat if used in a different manner.
