A New General, and a New War, in Afghanistan

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Long Career, Fresh Eyes
In Washington there had been a sense for months that the Afghan train was off the track and that McKiernan — an able armor officer — wasn't the right fit. On May 11, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, with Obama's blessing, tapped McChrystal for the Afghan post, saying "fresh eyes" were needed on the war.

McChrystal's official career is 33 years long, but he has, in effect, been in the Army for all his 54 years — both his father and paternal grandfather were Army officers, his father making it to two-star general. After graduating from West Point in 1976 — 31 years after his father — McChrystal climbed the Army ladder. He's seen some tragedies. In 1994, McChrystal was a lieutenant colonel with the 82nd Airborne Division when a flaming F-16 jet plowed into a parked C-141 at Pope Air Force Base. The cargo plane's 55,000 gallons of jet fuel erupted into a massive fireball, killing 18 of McChrystal's troops as they prepared for parachute jumps on a sunny North Carolina afternoon. (See pictures of the U.S. Army Reserve.)

Asked about the incident, McChrystal pauses for nine seconds, his mood shifting from animated to muted. "We sent our own paratroopers to bury each of our own killed," he says, saying the tragedy taught him the importance of teamwork. Others say it showed his leadership. McChrystal and his wife Annie attended all the funerals and memorial services. "That was real moral courage," says Dan McNeill, who was McChrystal's commander at the time and who later ran the war in Afghanistan. "I don't know if I could have done that."

In between stints with various special-operations units, McChrystal pulled tours at the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard. Before coming to the Pentagon, he spent 2003 to 2008 heading up the Joint Special Operations Command, the secret corps of Army Delta Force and Navy Seals based at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, although McChrystal deployed regularly to its forward post inside Iraq. In 2006 his unit succeeded in tracking down and killing Abu Mousab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq. McChrystal's record has not been without controversy. After the 2004 death by friendly fire of former NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, Pentagon investigators said McChrystal provided information that misleadingly suggested Tillman died at the enemy's hands when recommending him for the Silver Star. But the Army decided that McChrystal had "no reasonable basis" for second-guessing officers who drafted the recommendation.

Fit as a tuning fork, McChrystal has a certain monkish mythology about him that his aides seem keen to foster. In Afghanistan, they say, he gets up at 4 a.m. to run and e-mail before his workday really begins with an 8:30 video briefing with his regional commanders across the country. His iPod and Kindle (the newest model) are stocked by his wife with serious tomes on Pakistan, Lincoln and Vietnam. Right now, he is reading William Maley's 2002 book The Afghanistan Wars, a catalog of the long list of British failures in Afghanistan. McChrystal famously eats little during the day, recently only picking at an Afghan spread featuring four kinds of meat. To the chagrin of Afghans, who see drinking tea as an inalienable human right, he scrapped a morning tea break at a recent security briefing in Kandahar, and aides grumble, nicely, that he sees others' demands for lunch as a sign of weakness. (But he makes up for it at dinner: a colleague says a typical evening repast may include a cheeseburger, a fajita burrito, a pile of fries and ice cream. And maybe a brownie.) And if it weren't for uniforms and the help of his wife, he wouldn't have a clue what to wear. His tenor voice is soft, but his gaze — fixed on his target — can make subordinates squirm. If he takes off his glasses, says an aide, "you know you're in trouble."

Watching in Washington
Military policy in Afghanistan is now in the hands of this likable and very, very focused soldier. An Administration and a nation are waiting to see if his plan is any better than the one it replaced. Time is in short supply. Some in Washington are leery of Afghanistan's becoming another Vietnam. Representative David Obey, the Wisconsin lawmaker who chairs the powerful Appropriations Committee, said in May he's giving the White House a year to show progress — however defined — in Afghanistan. But at his confirmation hearing, McChrystal said he expects it will take 18 to 24 months to see whether things are turning around, and talking to TIME, he was clear that it will take even longer than that to make "permanent progress." (Read "Why Obama's Afghan War Is Different.")

Success is by no means assured. McChrystal's order to keep Afghan civilian casualties low, for example, may be politically savvy, but in the short term it can be militarily fraught. Before the Helmand offensive began, U.S. troops called in an air strike on a compound after coming under fire from it. A number of civilians died, and McChrystal was not pleased. "I want you all to stop dropping compounds," he quietly told the 100 members of his staff gathered inside his command center and others linked via video. "Yes, sir," responded the commander involved. Three days later, when troops in Helmand came under fire from such a compound, they followed his order. "We made the decision to isolate the compound and not destroy it," a Marine captain said, "because we couldn't confirm if civilians were inside."

The good news is that the compound wasn't bombed, no civilians were killed and no additional measure of poison was added to the bitter brew that has turned Afghans against the U.S. and its allies. The bad news is that the insurgents escaped from the compound before U.S. forces had a chance to secure it. The Marines call the need to tolerate the frustration of such incidents "tactical patience." Just how patient Americans and their Commander in Chief will turn out to be with Stan McChrystal's new way of fighting the Afghan war remains to be seen.

— With reporting by Ali Safi / Kabul

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