Independence [Updated]

I love how General McChrystal is allowed for several weeks now to lobby and browbeat his civilian commander, one Barack Obama, in favor of his demand for 40,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan. But the civilian ambassador to Afghanistan who is supposed to represent our democratically elected government has to shut up. Otherwise, he’s accused of ‘undermining’ what the army wants to do there.

Except that in the current case, Obama’s man in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, is a former liteutenant general himself and probably knows how that particular game is played.

Big decisions like this have a technical side and a political side, so we have been the object of much balloon-launching in recent days to see how Obama’s handling of the endless guerrilla war in Central Asia was going to fly with the public. My impression is that his enemies on Fox News were delighted to see him following their advice while those of us who got him elected were not thrilled. The idea that Karzai should be reinforced after his open theft of the presidential election there beggars belief.

I think it’s significant that Obama continues to visit places like Dover, Delaware (where the bodies of dead service personnel are shipped) and Arlington National Cemetery. Despite the predictable nasty sniping from armchair soldiers like the horrid Cheney and his horrid offspring, Obama is telegraphing the message about what it really costs to have people pursuing wars in foreign lands, i.e., they get killed there.

Not to mention the wounded, which should be on more people’s minds.

Now it seems as though the big escalation is not necessarily a done deal although for all we know, that could be another floater.

It doesn’t matter until we really find out what he’s going to do, but it is momentarily reassuring to think that he’s refusing to be railroaded and is asking not just how to get more troops over there, but how to get them back, too.

[Update] David Corn ferries the D.C. scuttlebutt from his reporter friends that the White House itself leaked Eikenberry’s memo, thus laying the groundwork for keeping troop levels right where they are or with a meaningless small boost to enable McChrystal to save face. In any case, expect howls of outrage from the usual suspects about losing the war on terror or some such blather. But Obama as the new Truman facing down MacArthur? Can’t wait!