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LISA MULLINS: The man chosen to replace General McKiernan in Afghanistan is Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal's appointment was a surprise. McKiernan had served as the top U.S. Commander in Afghanistan for less than a year. As The World's Matthew Bell reports, this top level personnel change reflects a shift in the U.S. strategy for Afghanistan.
MATTHEW BELL: The war in Afghanistan has suffered from a lack of attention and a lack of resources, says Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security.
ANDREW EXUM: And when I say a lack of resources, I don't just mean the amount of troops, but to be quite honest, it has suffered from a lack of intellectual resources. General Petraeus was not in Afghanistan because he was in Iraq. All those talented lieutenants who fought under General Petraeus were not in Afghanistan because they were in Iraq. That's now changing.
BELL: Big changes in strategy are likely to come with the selection of General McChrystal as the new American commander for Afghanistan. Exum is a former Army officer who served under McChrystal in both Afghanistan and Iraq. He says the former Special Operations commander has a reputation for being an intelligent leader.
EXUM: He is not a knuckle-dragging door kicker in the way that sometimes U.S. Army Rangers are portrayed in the popular imagination. He is an officer of tremendous intellectual gifts and, of course, that makes him a kindred spirit with General David Petraeus.
BELL: Both generals graduated from West Point, and Exum says McChrystal's close relationship with the head of Central Command is one important asset he would bring to the job in Afghanistan.
EXUM: The second personal relationship is the fact that General Rodriguez just a few days prior to this announcement yesterday was named as the Deputy Commander in Afghanistan. General Rodriguez and General McChrystal were classmates in the United States Military Academy Class of 1976. They are the very best of friends. So I think that at the very top level in Afghanistan and between the commands in Afghanistan and the U.S. Central Command, you're going to have a very tight working relationship.
BELL: Military experts have good things to say about the outgoing U.S. Commander for Afghanistan, but they described General McKiernan as more of a conventional military thinker, as the Pentagon begins to implement some of the same counterinsurgency strategies that helped improve security in Iraq. Steve Metz of the U.S. Army War College says there's a new priority number one in Afghanistan.
STEVE METZ: By putting someone like McChrystal with the Special Forces background in, it's a signal that the training advice of the Afghan security forces really are the heart of the matter. I mean, for American or NATO forces to actually go out and patrol the villages and do counterinsurgency, might be a short-term necessity. But as soon as possible the idea is that Afghan forces will be doing that just as the same sort of transition that we've seen in Iraq.
BELL: In Afghanistan it's been eight years since U.S. forces toppled the Taliban, but Afghan security forces only number about 80-thousand right now. And experts say the country will need four times that many to keep the peace. They say this is a job that will take years, not months, to be done right. Another challenge for General McChrystal, should he be confirmed, will be managing expectations at home. Again, Steven Metz.
METZ: That's always one of our biggest obstacles in counterinsurgency is that Americans want to see quick results. I mean, we want to get six months reports and we want every report to be better than the previous one. Often counterinsurgency takes many years, sometimes many decades. It's often one step forward and one step backwards, and you only show progress over a very long period of time. So what General McChrystal has to do is to find ways to convince the American Congress, the American political leadership, the American public that we are on the right track even though it might not be really evident at the time.
BELL: What's clear though is that Barack Obama is doubling down in Afghanistan, something he criticized President Bush for doing in Iraq, and that effort begins with getting the new administration's own people in place. For The World, I'm Matthew Bell.
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Profile of new US commander