From the WSJ:

After watching the U.S. try and fail for years to put down insurgencies in both countries, Gen. McChrystal said he believes that to win in Afghanistan, “You’re going to have to convince people, not kill them.

“Since 9/11, I have watched as America tried to first put out this fire with a hammer, and it doesn’t work,” he said last week at his home at Fort McNair in Washington. “Decapitation strategies don’t work.”

In the interview, Gen. McChrystal noted he’s unsure whether the planned troop levels for the job he envisions will be adequate — despite the Obama administration’s commitment to raise the U.S. presence to 68,000 by year’s end, to go along with 35,000 allied forces. Iraq surge commanders had more than 170,000 U.S. forces.

“I know that I want it to be an effective traditional or classic counterinsurgency campaign by getting people down in among the population,” the general said. “I know that’s easier said than done with a limited-sized force.”

And thus do we have in four short paragraphs some revealing and even some troubling information.  When General McChrystal says that “decapitation strategies don’t work,” if he means that the high value target campaign is a failure, The Captain’s Journal most heartily agrees.  It has always been, it forever will be.  We have spoken against it for months and even years.  The design of the campaign should be to destroy the insurgency from the bottom up, not from the top down.

Hopefully McChrystal doesn’t mean that he wishes to convince the mid- or high-level Taliban commanders to join with the government.  In fact, we are heartened to hear that he is no big fan of the reconciliation program.  But what does he think that the balance of the forces have been doing while as a SOF commander he has targeted, captured and killed some HVT?  Does he believe that they have been engaged in only the softer side of counterinsurgency?

Surely he must know that both kinetics and population engagement have been included in the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and continue to be?  Surely he knows this, doesn’t he?  Doesn’t he know that the Marines killed 400 Taliban in Helmand?  What does he mean when he says that we can’t kill people, we must convince them?  Surely he knows that there are irreconcilables that must be killed, and that his SOF cannot be engaged in doing this everywhere, all of the time?  His SOF must be attached to infantry units, and they must all be engaged in all aspects of counterinsurgency, everywhere, all of the time, including killing and road construction.  Right?

And finally he puts his finger on the root problem.  Doing this with a “limited-sized force.”  So when will he inform the administration that he needs more troops?  Sooner (preferably) or later?