From Rolling Stone Magazine

I've finished reading the Rolling Stone article that tomorrow could result in the firing of General McChrystal by President Obama. There is a lot of great material in that article, which you can find on the Rolling Stone's web site and in many other places, and I recommend it. In some ways the McChrystal indiscretions are only a small part of the story. Just as important are the insights the article gives us into the status of a war that sometimes looks as if it will never end.  Here is just one thoughtful passage:


"Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a "bleeding ulcer." In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it's precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn't want."


So even as he decides tonight and tomorrow whether to relieve McChrystal of command, accept his resignation, or permit him to continue the mission in Afghanistan, Obama must be wondering what, if anything, can be accomplished there and whether or not it makes sense to continue this war.