By Jay Ambrose
Scripps Howard News Service

Hey, fox, come have some fun in my chicken coop, General Stanley McChrystal as much as said to a Rolling Stone reporter, which was a very, very stupid thing to do, almost as stupid as Barack Obama saying we will scat from Afghanistan next year and really shouldn't fight back much, anyway.

Almost, I said. Not quite.

The penalty for the Afghan military commander's flub is a lost job while the penalty for the president's strategic inanities might be a lost war. That could leave the United States at the mercy of terrorists and the Afghan people at the mercy of Taliban thugs. In a preview of what the latter would be like, these stone-age barbarians recently hanged a seven-year-old boy to punish a grandfather refusing to grovel before them.

Obama had every right to give McChrystal the boot. Yes, the general is touted as a courageous, honest, experienced, dedicated, self-sacrificing, smart warrior who has worked 20-hour days to fix the Afghan mess for his country. And nothing he says in the article smacks of disobedience to his commander in chief.

But he and other headquarter officers did mock every high-powered non-soldier in sight, brainlessly permitting a writer for a far-left, startle-everyone magazine to listen in. The words were heard around the world, and this won't do. It plays fast and loose with the sacred principle of civilian control of the military and is, as the president said, ``divisive." Though Obama could have let the vaudevillian act pass with a reprimand, he is hardly to be faulted for his career intervention.

Two terrible facts remain, one of them being the deadline for withdrawal. This promise alone could be more than enough to flummox even the super-competent Gen. David Petraeus, named by Obama as the replacement commander. A sop to the anti-war crowd, the sparingly qualified timetable supposedly will prompt our Afghan allies to learn to take care of themselves without our assistance. Guess again.

The real consequence is, first, to embolden our enemies, to clue them that the Great Infidel can't stand the heat, will be gone soon and the prize will be theirs. Secondly, it tells our Afghan allies to switch sides. The U.S.A. is going to leave whether they are ready to handle things by themselves or not. Want to be murdered in a year or so? Then stick with the departing United States. Otherwise, give the Taliban guys a deep bow.

This deadline comes on top of other problems ― not least of which is a corrupt, devious partner in President Hamid Karzai ― and on top of another stupidity, a policy of too often being shyly aggressive and offering meager resistance when attacked.

For both humane and political reasons, we should work hard to minimize civilian casualties, but the Obama administration has carried this principle to the point of keeping our soldiers from ably defending themselves or pursing the Taliban with full vigor in myriad situations, and that's absurd. It beckons defeat and is morally mistaken. You do not put troops in harm's way and then virtually disarm them.

War is always a horror that can become more of a horror if undertaken with a weak will. Some experts say that, with sufficient determination, we can win this thing and that it is well worth winning, that we could thereby make ours a far more secure and decent world. It doesn't have to take forever if we go at it the right way.

But if Obama does not do with his own worst Afghan policies what he did with McChrystal ― namely, get rid of them ― it could become increasingly difficult to ignore critics saying we should abandon this longest of American wars immediately, perhaps concocting other methods to intervene when terrorists there seem a threat. Why prolong our misery if ending it with victory has been made highly improbable?

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay@aol.com.