{"id":277383,"date":"2010-02-04T15:55:31","date_gmt":"2010-02-04T20:55:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/washingtonindependent.com\/?p=75828"},"modified":"2010-02-04T15:55:31","modified_gmt":"2010-02-04T20:55:31","slug":"mcchrystal%e2%80%99s-feeling-good-about-afghanistan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/277383","title":{"rendered":"McChrystal\u2019s Feeling Good About Afghanistan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Afghanistan optimism: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2010\/02\/05\/world\/asia\/05gates.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss\">Catch it<\/a>!<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>\u201cI still will tell you that I believe the situation in Afghanistan is serious,\u201d said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI do not say now that I think it\u2019s deteriorating,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd I said that last summer, and I believed that that was correct. I feel differently now. I am not prepared to say that we have turned the corner. So I\u2019m saying that the situation is serious, but I think we have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009, and beginning some progress and that we\u2019ll make real progress in 2010.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><span id=\"more-75828\"><\/span>Oh, the perils of commanding a counterinsurgency, in which granular information is both deeply necessary and potentially contradictory from the perspective of the broader strategic picture. You say that things are going well and you&#8217;re naive or out of touch. You say that things are going poorly and everyone starts writing that Even The Commander Thinks It&#8217;s Hopeless. As a result, you&#8217;re kind of boxed into heavily caveated statements. My personal favorite came when Gen. Petraeus told a congressional panel in 2008 that &#8220;nothing succeeds like significant progress.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Afghanistan optimism: Catch it! \u201cI still will tell you that I believe the situation in Afghanistan is serious,\u201d said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. \u201cI do not say now that I think it\u2019s deteriorating,\u201d he added. \u201cAnd I said that last summer, and I believed that that was correct. I feel differently now. I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4314,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-277383","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277383","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4314"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=277383"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/277383\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=277383"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=277383"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=277383"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}