What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us

The scariest thing Gen. McChrystal told Congress about Afghanistan.

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, at 5:39 PM ET

At an otherwise uneventful hearing before the House Armed Services Committee this morning, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said something that should confirm and heighten most people's apprehensions about the war's escalation.

McChrystal noted that he has accumulated several years of command experience in that country since the war began. And yet, he confessed, "There is much in Afghanistan that I do not understand."