Apologies for the light blogging this week. I have been getting ready for a trip that will require even less blogging next week, so I have been falling behind in following the latest news. McChrystal’s departure is obviously the most significant story of the month, and there is a lot here worth discussing. I’ll start with a few observations. They will be far from exhaustive. Retaining McChrystal would have been untenable, and it would have fed the story of an indecisive Obama that critics of administration policy on Afghanistan have been eager to push from the beginning. Replacing him with Petraeus was the sort of cynical, politically savvy move that will help to sustain support for the war in Congress and the media, which is what Petraeus did fairly well for the Iraq war in 2007, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the wrong choice.

After more than seven years of being under-resourced and undermanned, the war in Afghanistan was steadily alienating the civilian population and gradually contributing to U.S. failure. The administration’s Afghanistan plan has led to some improvement in that it has reduced the numbers of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. and NATO actions, and considering the failing status quo approach and the awful “counter-terrorist” alternative that was the default choice in 2009 the administration’s plan still looks as if it was the best realistic option available. As in Iraq, having a “conditions-based” withdrawal in Afghanistan has always left U.S. policy at the mercy of insurgents to some extent and it will prolong U.S. involvement there more than it should, but it remains the case that the administration’s plan was the only one that was both politically viable in Washington and the most realistic way to create conditions for a final U.S. withdrawal.

As Andrew Exum wrote shortly after the Rolling Stone piece came out, “In a weird way, Hastings is making the argument to readers of Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone!) that counterinsurgency sucks because it doesn’t allow our soldiers to kill enough people.” That has also been one of the principal criticisms of administration policy coming from the right: the rules of engagement are too strict and do not allow for enough aimless violence. This is what I find so frustrating about a lot of phony Republican “antiwar” arguments, as I have explained before in my criticisms of George Will and others. These critics are all for withdrawal, provided that “withdrawal” still allows air strikes against targets in Afghanistan and Pakistan for years and decades to come regardless of the effects on the civilian population. These critics really have no problem with an endless military campaign in the region so long as there is no immediate risk to any Americans. This is one reason why it is somewhat misleading to describe the “counter-terrorist” approach as a more “limited” one, when it is certain to be far less limited in time because it is fairly certain to push the population into the arms of the groups that would be targeted by these strikes. What advocates of genuine disengagement and withdrawal often overlook is that the fastest way to get to a point where the administration can leave Afghanistan entirely is to shore up the Afghan government and military enough that they will not disintegrate soon after U.S. forces depart.