McChrystal looks on the bright side in Washington

General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, made his first trip to Capitol Hill on Tuesday since President Obama gave him the additional 30,000 American troops he wants to defeat the Taliban.

He found a pronounced lack of enthusiasm for the war, even among those who endorsed his mission, but no serious danger that Congress would not, in the end, support him.

Republicans seized the opportunity to take shots at the Obama administration over the time it took to review McChrystal's request, and for the president's confusing promise that the U.S. will begin to withdraw troops in the summer of 2011. They tried to get McChrystal to say that the White House had put the mission at risk by paring back the size of the surge for political reasons, but the general declined to do so. He has been promised what he wanted to win, he said. "It provides me with the resources we need," he said. "I believe we will absolutely be successful."

And though he did not seek the 2011 deadline, said McChrystal, he saw a bright side to having it. It would have "a forcing function and impetus" on the Afghan government and people, he said, to know that the U.S. commitment was not open-ended. And besides, "they don't want us to stay forever. They don't want foreigners in their country."

Stymied by McChrystal's loyalty, the Republicans largely decided, in the words of GOP Sen. John McCain of Arizona, to "agree to disagree" about the 2011 deadline, and fell in line behind the president.

If there is rebellion brewing, it's among the Democrats. Members of the president's party groused about corruption in Afghanistan's government, and the lack of Afghan military support for the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy.

"Increasing the number of U.S. forces acting without sufficient Afghan partners will feed Taliban propaganda that portrays U.S. forces in Afghanistan as occupiers, and could lead to greater instead of lesser Afghan dependency upon us," said Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

But the Democrats were frustrated by the loyal testimony of an Obama administration official as well. During the deliberations about the strategy, the U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry — a retired U.S. general and former commander in Afghanistan himself — was portrayed in media leaks as a skeptic and a foe of McChrystal's plan. Today, however, Eikenberry had nothing but nice things to say about the general and the strategy.

"The mission was refined," he told the House Armed Services Committee. "The ways forward were clarified. ... I am unequivocally in support of this mission."

Which is not to say that McChrystal or Eikenberry promised a slam dunk victory. They acknowledged, when the members of Congress asked them, that the training of Afghan military units was a slow process, that drug trafficking and government corruption are sizable problems, and that Taliban troops have safe sanctuary across the border in Pakistan.

"We await urgent concrete steps," said Eikenberry, when asked about corruption in the Afghan government.

http://www.globalpost.com/notebook/worldview/091208/mcchrystal-looks-the-bright-side-washington