the McChrystal they know would resign before he'd stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy

And fire McChrystal anyway, he's an idiot to start with.  He won't bend to political pressure?  Gimme a break, the only way he got to his position in the first place was by being a good company man, which is political as hell.  Tell you what, general, get phucking lost now.  

Do you really think, Tent, after all we've seen in the last seven years, that the institutional imagination exists in the military anywhere near the extent it would be needed to for "success"?  Sorry, IMO, it would take decades to change the military culture and mindset to where it is ready to "fight" these new and unconventional "wars".  The religious influence alone in our military is frigtening and unacceptable, just like we think it is when other nations use their god nonsense to justify something.

Sorry, but with my brother's experience, with him yeat again in harm's way there, and with his passion for his mission now all but dead, I cannot share anyone's hawkish stances, epsecially when those stances are not followed immediately by "And, it should be noted, I am actively encouraging my children to, immediately upon high school graduation, join the military so they can fight these wars."  Becausee if we ain't doing that, we really are, when it comes down it it, completely full of sh*t.  

After the fact, they went on CNN and spoke to all the misgivings they had in 2002/2003.  But they didn't resign and should have.

Teressa and Dave are right, it may be the case that McChrystal should not be threatening resignation, but if he feels that he can't in good faith keep America and his troops safe by placing another plan into effect, then he needs to resign.  And honorably so.

Still, my sympathies are with McChrystal. After all, he needs more troops bringin' democracy and stuff, like this:

On September 7 the Swedish aid agency Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that the previous week US soldiers raided one of its hospitals. According to the director of the aid agency, Anders Fange, troops stormed through both the men's and women's wards, where they frantically searched for wounded Taliban fighters...

   Fange said that US troops broke down doors and tied up visitors and hospital staff.

So who did it?

The simplest theory -- and one most administration officials Monday were endorsing -- is that a military or civilian Pentagon official who supports McChrystal's policy put it out in an attempt to pressure Obama to follow McChrystal's suggestion and increase troop levels in Afghanistan.

But not everyone in Washington is a believer in Occam's razor, so all manner of other theories flourished.

There are believers in the reverse leak, in which the leak itself is meant to damage McChrystal's position by inducing White House anger at the general. There's the fake leak, in which the White House may have been trying to back itself into a corner. A former government official with ties to the Pentagon said the talk in the building was that a senior military official had given it to the reporter for his book on the Obama White House -- not realizing it could end up in print sooner.

Knowing when to salute

In reality, the choice is moot. For general officers, resigning involves forfeiting everything important to a soldier--rank, military benefits, retired pay, and most importantly, membership in the profession. Resigning is such a drastic action that it has been over 40 years since a general officer resigned from the Army (and he later requested reinstatement). Retirement, on the other hand, is inevitable and ubiquitous in the senior ranks. Anyone serving at least 20 years eventually retires.  

I think he has it right on the strategy

BTD has for a long time been a supporter of the imperialist war against the people in Afghanistan--and by this helped to make Talkleft a voice of US imperialism. It therefore is no surprise that he supports McChrystal's new "strategy".

For a completely opposite view on McChrystal read the article published by the WSWS today:

Media reports on McChrystal's proposed change in strategy invariably refer to a supposed shift from hunting down "insurgents" to "protecting" the Afghan population. This innocuous rhetoric disguises the real content of the proposal, which is the prosecution of a far more aggressive counterinsurgency campaign that would send American troops into hostile population centers, like Kandahar City, to systematically suppress and intimidate popular opposition to US aims.

The US commander repeatedly criticizes what he describes as a preoccupation on the part of US and NATO commanders with "force protection" and calls for the occupation troops to operate with "less armor and less distance from the population."

McChrystal acknowledges that the result will be a further escalation in bloodshed. "It is realistic to expect that Afghan and coalition casualties will increase," he writes.

Given McChrystal's background as the former chief of the US military's Joint Special Operations Command--tasked with hunting down and assassinating individuals deemed terrorists by the US government--the increasing use of similar methods in Afghanistan can be anticipated. This would likely involve death squads composed of Afghan security forces and US "advisors" killing suspected opponents of the occupation and intimidating the rest of the population.

The general's report also includes a section on the detention of "insurgents," which stresses that this should be an "Afghan-run system" that would guarantee US forces "access to detainees for interrogation." No doubt, McChrystal is incorporating lessons learned in Iraq, when the unit he commanded became notorious for the torture of detainees at the prison facility it operated. Giving Afghan security forces formal responsibility for the detention system provides the US military with a buffer against similar torture charges.