NOT GOOD, NOT INSPIRING - AT 6:26 P.M. ET:  President Obama's national security adviser, retired Marine General James Jones, seemed to needle General Stanley McChrystal, our commander in Afghanistan, today:

Addressing Gen. Stanley McChrystal's public call for more troops in Afghanistan, White House national security adviser James L. Jones said that advice to the president should come though the military chain of command rather than by open campaigning for a strategic decision.

"Ideally, it's better for military advice to come up through the chain of command and I think that General McChrystal and the others in the chain of command will present the president with not just one option, which does, in fact, tend to have a ... enforcing function, but a range of options that the president can consider," Jones said.

COMMENT:  As they say in diplomacy, this is not helpful.  Putting down your theater commander damages morale, unless you intend to fire him.  McChrystal did nothing wrong.  He reiterated in public what everyone knows is his point of view, and he did it in an appropriate setting.

There were also leaks from the White House earlier in the week disparaging the advice McChrystal is giving.  I don't know whether that advice is right or not, but the leaks are unseemly and divisive.  This administration doesn't do war very well, or anything else for that matter.  Hmm.  It does do going out for dinner quite well.  We'll grant that.

October 4, 2009