June 29, 2010 - "A weeks is a long time in Politics" echoed British statement Harold Wilson, but in days after the Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), Stanley Allen McChrystal became the "Runaway General" in a obscure magazine, the United President Barack Obama has been put under most severe test of his adult life.

It can't be all that wrong of what McChrystal told in that magazine, but he lost the job for saying it in public. Anybody who understands anything of politico-military culture would understand that political leadership is tested when it conducts a war.

In this case of Obama, he had inherited two wars thanks to his predecessor George W Bush. But the question came on his Afpak strategy of annihilating the Talibans both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. All policy and strategy is fine and good till the time when it doesn't just become "words" In Obama's case this is what has happened. Obama has not moved an inch away from his predecessor in conducting wars.

First of all, Obama was left with no options except to operate in Afghanistan. He had the best team in place with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Obama's envoy in Richard Holbrooke, and General David Petrasus the Central Command Chief now who's posted to undertake what the "Runaway General" had left.

But still there is not success insight as because there is no domestic support. That's the key. With the majority of workforce in the still suffering from the recession, it makes no sense for any administration to wage a war in a country which at best cannot have an army of its own. Now this is the central problem or the "strategic gap" which has never been understood by the security experts in the western capital.

To elevate few bandits of terrorists bent on destroying the US and expecting the public to support a war against them for a decade is too much to ask for. Simply putting, US has never lost a war in its history but is deemed to lose wars in which actually there is no opposite army.

Obama is a historian and he needs to lesson in that. The Union Army in Lincoln's time defeated the Confederates because the people wanted it, the US was able to defeat the Spanish in the 1898 war and declare "To go to the hell with Spain" because the general  US population wanted to stamp their "Manifested Destiny" around the world. Japan's imperial retreat started on the day when Americans understood they had a threat from the Japanese. All these has changed in the past 60 years. It has become all most impossible for the western security analysts to sell the idea that terrorism coming from Afghanistan is the central challenge to the international security order.

The pent-up shown by General McChyrstal  is not just a flash in the pan. It is there in the armed troops and the US Marine troops for years. Though the withdrawal of the first of the US troops in Afghanistan is fast nearing by July 2011, one wonders what the US combat troops along with their NATO allies had achieved in the past decade except for making way for Hamid Karzai for a third term. It's true that Hamid Karzai got along well with McChyrstal than with the Afpak envoy Richard Holbrooke. Definitely Afghanistan will miss McChyrstal though the real engineer of the "surge" of Iraq General David Petrasus has taken the command.

If the US troops keep dragging on for another year and Obama as observed by the "Runaway General" continues to be intimidated by men in uniform, then there is every chance that the Commander in Chief will miss one of his best soldiers before the 2012 Presidential elections. Some sections in the US feel that  Obama's magic is probably over in the US and if he has to have another chance in 2012, he desperately needs to win the war in Afghanistan.

{The above article was written by Balaji Chandramohan, Editor World Security Network. (The article carries the view point of the author and not of International Reporter). The author can be contacted through his email mohanbalaji20032004@yahoo.co.in, mohanbalaji2003@gmail.com}