A General Within Bounds

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has come under fire for making public comments about the war. While answering questions after an Oct. 1 speech -- in which he avoided taking sides in the policy debate -- McChrystal challenged a popular alternative to the approach that President Obama sent him to Afghanistan to pursue. An op-ed on this page Saturday argued that a battlefield commander should not get ahead of his president in public. Next, national security adviser James L. Jones faulted McChrystal for speaking outside his internal chain of command while the president is reviewing his strategy and basic assumptions about the war...