General McChrystal’s Strategic Assessment: Evaluating the Operating Environment in Afghanistan in the Summer of 2009 [ONLINE ONLY]

This narrative focuses on General McChrystal and his strategic assessment team’s analysis. It describes the assessment team and covers some of the early friction between the members of the team who had arrived with the new commander and the existing headquarters staff. It then dissects the Initial Assessment Working Group that relied heavily on the expertise of a number of civilian scholars invited to take part in the analysis. This study breaks down each of the additional assessment subcomponents, all of which had their own separate working group.