According to senior U.S. intelligence sources, Gen. Stanley McChrystal's Rolling Stone magazine interview was no gaffe. The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan had grown totally frustrated with the chaotic state of Obama Administration policy management, especially with the role of Afpak special envoy Richard Holbrooke, and had concluded that the whole Afghan program was in deep trouble. "McChrystal reached the point where he was, in his own mind, fighting Al Qaeda, Taliban, Holbrooke, Vice President Biden, and Ambassador Eikenberry, all at once. He wanted to try to force a streamlining of the command, to get direct access to the President," one source explained.

A second source put the onus directly on President Obama and his White House inner circle: "The problem that everyone is having with the Obama White House is that, for them, duplicity is not just acceptable. It is a necessity. They lie about everything, from BP, to Afghanistan. Within the top layers of the military, there was a growing sense that they were about to be scapegoated by the President—in the interests of his reelection campaign."

McChrystal, the source emphasized, intended to use the Rolling Stone interview to provoke a policy fight over Afghanistan, because the existing strategy is being undermined by administration infighting, Obama efforts to appease the left wing of the Democratic Party, and Holbrooke's constant interference.

Once the decision was made to dump McChrystal, according to another source, it was Defense Secretary Gates who pressed for Gen. Petraeus to replace him, arguing that only by installing Petraeus could the White House avoid a full-scale policy battle over where to go in Afghanistan.

Lyndon LaRouche said that Gen. McChrystal, like many other top American military commanders, was worried about the "Vietnam War Syndrome," the idea that the military will be blamed for the failure. "There is a dynamic within the military command, that extends far beyond Gen. McChrystal. They see Afghanistan, increasingly, as a hopeless case. They want to get out."

LaRouche provided his own assessment: "We should go in and do what has to be done: Wipe out the opium trade, at every level. The problem is that Obama is unwilling to do that—because it is not British policy to wipe out the Afghan opium business. Russia would work with the U.S. to accomplish this, India would help, for their own reasons. And even Pakistan would see such an action as an opportunity to free themselves from the London/Saudi problems."

LaRouche warned that it would be crucial to "watch out for the Israeli screw-up factor. Israel, under Netanyahu, is totally run by the British. Israel hates to hear it said, but they are a puppet of London, and they would be used, potentially, to sabotage any serious effort to do the one thing that would change the Afghan situation for the better: Wipe out the dope trade."

LaRouche observed that, while he totally disagreed with the Petraeus/McChrystal Afghan counterinsurgency strategy, he viewed the McChrystal affair as an indication of the military institutions' frustration with Obama. "And that is totally understandable."

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