As long as I’ve started down this road, this morning, let me add a few other thoughts.

1. Judging from my email, I was not clear enough that my quarrel (expressed in last week’s column) is with General McChrystal’s framework for understanding the conflict (i.e., it’s the Afghans’ war, not our war), his assessment of how Islam factors into the challenge, and with a major component of his counterinsurgency strategy. My quarrel is not over General McChrystal’s valor (which is bottomless) or his good faith. General McChrystal is a great patriot, an inspiration to those under his command, and deservedly a legend in military counter-terrorism. I wish we could get to a point where we could have a debate about theory and tactics without its being contorted into a personal attack. I think the McChrystal memo is deeply flawed; that doesn’t mean I think McChrystal is.

Further, while I confess I am not sold on counterinsurgency warfare, I am not against it either. Because I said that I’m against a sociology experiment masquerading as counterinsurgency (COIN), some readers (understandably, I think in retrospect) took that as a wholesale dismissal of COIN. I didn’t mean it that way. I would not presume to debate COIN warfare strategy with Gen. McChrystal — any more than I imagine he’d want to pick a fight with me over, say, the Fourth Amendment. He’s the expert and I, most decidedly, am not. I don’t believe in government-by-experts; I think we need to hear out the experts on both sides and make up our own minds. Along those lines, I am more persuaded by experts who are not COIN enthusiasts (like Thomas Snodgrass in this American Thinker essay). But I certainly heed the persuasive force of Fred Kagan’s points about COIN as the best option for the challenge of fighting insurgents who meld into the general population — especially in what has become an impossibly difficult legal environment where every collateral civilian casualty becomes not only a tactical problem but fodder for war-crimes allegations.

My column was not meant to question COIN warfare tactics, and while I don’t agree that securing the population is our biggest priority in Afghanistan, I don’t see how anyone could question the need to cultivate the population for intelligence purposes, and that obviously means securing the population. What I am questioning is the purported need, under the heading of COIN, to do all manner of government-building, economy-building, and Western institution-sowing that are not combat tasks and that are not necessary to dinstinguishing the good guys from the bad guys. To me, that is not a miiltary strategy, it’s a political strategy. I don’t feel the need to defer to Gen. McChrystal’s judgment about political strategy, and this one is a bad idea for the many reasons outlined in the column.

2. I do not understand the criticism of Gen. McChrystal for going public. In the Bush years, military commanders who went public with their views were portrayed as heroes. Pete Wehner has just posted some excellent thoughts on this at Contentions, and for what it’s worth, I agree with Pete. What we do in Afghanistan is a matter of huge public importance. Though I don’t agree with the McChrystal plan, I commend him for giving us the benefit of his thinking. I also commend conservative commentators on both sides of the question — George Will, Diana West, Andy Bostom, Fred, Rich, Bill Kristol, Max Boot, and others. The debate gets heated at times, that’s to be expected. But there’s nothing more important than getting this right, and that means everyone’s best effort. This is a high moment on the Right.

3. My column was very critical on lapses in force-protection and the rules of engagement. A number of my military correspondents agree passionately; a number of others point out that, as someone who hasn’t served, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. To the latter, I’d make two points. First, I am loath to criticize the military in wartime even when I disagree with aspects of the mission (I was lukewarm at best on the surge in Iraq, but I supported it); I did not presume to criticize the lack of force protection until a fair number of military experts did — their criticism made sense to me. The protection of our men and women in harm’s way is an important issue to all Americans, not just military people, and it can’t be that a lack of military experience disqualifies one from commenting.

Second, after my column came the reports this weekend about the eight U.S. soldiers killed in an ambush in the Hindu Kush valley. (See, e.g., here.) If the reports are to be believed, our troops were sitting ducks — deployed in inadequate numbers to protect themselves with their pull-out delayed by a desire to accommodate a request by the Afghan government (which didn’t want to look weak right before the election) and a shortage of resources (like cargo helicopters). I don’t know if all that is true — we’ll have to wait for the investigation. But I don’t need a military background to know that, if it is true, it’s unacceptable.

There have been disturbing incidents in which it appears force-protection was inadequate, and they have to be considered in conjunction with Gen. McChrystal’s explicit theory that, when it comes to force protection, less is more. I am not accusing, and would not accuse, Gen. McChrystal and other U.S. commanders of willfully endangering our troops; I’m certain they believe their strategy will make American personnel safer in the long-run. But good faith is not necessarily good judgment. We need answers on what is happening over there, and why.

4. Finally (for now), in fairness to Gen. McChrystal, I don’t think he was asked to come up with a strategy for winning the war on terror; he was asked to come up with a strategy for success in Afghanistan. I have been critical, as have others, of the failure of strategic vision regarding the wider war. I don’t think you can win a regional (if not global) war by pretending it’s only happening in two theaters, pretending hostiles like the Iranians and the Saudis are not hostiles, and pretending that Islam is an asset rather than a complicating problem we need to work around. And even if I were more inclined toward nation-building and democracy-promotion, I would still not think you can start the Marshall Plan in 1942 — we need to win first. But those matters relate to the American people’s understanding of the conflict and political will (or lack thereof) to address it militarily, legally, and diplomatically. They are not problems of Gen. McChrystal’s making. I do not believe he was asked how he would prosecute the war on a clean slate, and I don’t blame him for problems that are really about us.