More digging through the strategy review at the Windy. I’ve got to run to do this al-Jazeera hit, plus I’m wrapping a different piece you may be interested in, so here I go cutting-n-pasting.

[McChrystal's] approach is familiar to anyone who read McChrystal’s counterinsurgency guidance or the “metrics” he set out with Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. Protect the population. Give the population material reasons to support the Afghan government and NATO. “Prioritize responsive and accountable governance,” which appears like a pipe dream now that Hamid Karzai looks to have stolen an election. Reorganize the NATO command to better fit these missions. Reverse the Taliban’s momentum in the next year — or, he doesn’t say explicitly, mitigate failure. It’s also, as Josh Foust has observed, more of a quantitative change from McChrystal’s predecessor than a qualitative one.

For those who worry about mission creep, this document cites two foundational texts for it. First is the ISAF mission statement: “ISAF, in support of the [Afghan government], conducts operations in Afghanistan to reduce the capability and will of the insurgency, support the growth in capacity and capabilities of the Afghan National Security Forces (ANSF), and facilitate improvement in governance and socio-economic development, in order to provide a secure environment for sustainable security that is observable to the population.” Notice that there is nothing in there about al-Qaeda. McChrystal has to operate within the boundaries of what the political leadership in the various NATO capitols has set, and which the United Nations has blessed, as the proper functions of NATO forces in Afghanistan — and a lot of this is the vestige of Donald Rumsfeld’s belief that U.S. forces should hunt al-Qaeda and do nothing else.

The second text is Obama’s March 27 speech, which he says provides “a clear path of what we must do.” What Obama is doing now is determining whether McChrystal’s take indeed matches that speech. But notice that McChrystal is saying that these two texts provide a foundation for the mission in Afghanistan, and from there he argues that considering the deteriorating situation on the ground, a counterinsurgency approach is the way to best achieve those goals. If Obama doesn’t ultimately agree, this straight-line progression sketched by McChrystal will raise the question — a question that Obama anticipated — of whether Obama has backed away from that earlier speech.

Then there’s McChrystal’s other audience: the rest of the military.

Read the whole thing. Please!