This is the Choice: War or Chaos?

The Washington Post in an editorial this morning offers a full-throated defense of General McChrystal's costly counter-insurgency strategy, which Obama seems to be backing away from even though he had given such a strategy his full support last March:

What has changed since March? As Mr. Obama noted, Afghanistan's
presidential election has been plagued by allegations of fraud, sharpening
questions about whether the government can be a reliable partner. Taliban
attacks are spreading despite the deployment of 21,000 additional troops
approved by the president earlier this year. Some in and outside the
administration have argued for a more limited strategy centered on striking
al-Qaeda's leaders, giving up the more ambitious political and economic tasks
built into the counterinsurgency doctrine.

It's hard to see, however, how Mr. Obama can refute the analysis he
offered last March. "If the Afghan government falls to the Taliban or allows
al-Qaeda to go unchallenged," he said then, "that country will again be a base
for terrorists who want to kill as many of our people as they possibly can."
Afghanistan, he continued, "is inextricably linked to the future of its
neighbor, Pakistan," where al-Qaeda and the Taliban now aim at seizing control
of a state that possesses nuclear weapons. Moreover, Mr. Obama said, "a return
to Taliban rule would condemn their country to brutal governance . . . and the
denial of basic human rights to the Afghan people -- especially women and
girls."

"To succeed, we and our friends and allies must reverse the Taliban's
gains, and promote a more capable and accountable Afghan government," Mr. Obama concluded. As Gen. McChrystal's report makes very clear, keeping faith with that goal will require more troops, more resources and years of patience. Yet to
break with it would both dishonor and endanger this country. As the president
put it, "the world cannot afford the price that will come due if Afghanistan
slides back into chaos."

This demonstrates quite nicely the Washington Post's editorial page slant these days: hawkish, even neo-conservative, advocacy of full-bodied military intervention in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. It's pretty amazing, really. And disastrous, in my opinion.