Apropos of my frustrations last week, here’s my contender for weakest link in the McChrystal strategy assessment.

McChrystal’s review, completed a few days after the elections last month, calls them “far from perfect” and almost as an afterthought notes that “the credibility of the election results remains an open question.” Yet McChrystal says that the goal in Afghanistan for Afghan governance is not “perfection.” Instead, it’s “an improvement in governance that addresses the worst of today’s high level abuse of power, low-level corruption, and bureaucratic incapacity will suffice.”

Will that be enough? If the point is to inspire confidence among Afghans, would that be achieved by merely addressing “the worst of today’s high level abuse of power”? If that’s the most this strategy could realistically deliver, that’s a reason to reassess the strategy. It’s incoherent to say that governmental incapacity and corruption is as dangerous as the insurgency, but the United States and its allies don’t actually have to yield that much to tamp down that danger.

Also, here’s Carl Levin’s response to the leak. For those hoping Obama won’t increase troop levels, the case just got harder, from a political perspective. (From a substantive perspective, ain’t a damn thing changed, and so I’m surprised by all the meta-coverage of this.) But as a wise man once said, hard is not hopeless.