'Humility' needed in Afghanistan, commander says

President Obama meets with Gen. Stanley McChrystal aboard Air Force One on Friday.

Kristi Keck
CNN

The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan said Thursday the coalition in the war-torn country is going to have to do things "dramatically differently, even uncomfortably differently" in order to succeed.

"We must operate and think in a fundamentally new way," Gen. Stanley McChrystal said in a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a British think thank. He stressed the importance of connecting with the Afghan people, who he said are "frustrated" that more has not been accomplished in the nearly 8-year-old war.

McChrystal said he discounts immediately those who simplify the problem or offer a solution "because they absolutely have no clue about the complexity of what we are dealing with."

McChrystal arrived in Afghanistan in 2002. In June, he replaced Gen. David McKiernan as the top commander in the region. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said at the time that a "new leadership and fresh eyes" were needed.

McChrystal recently submitted to the Pentagon his assessment of the Afghanistan situation. In it, he warned that more troops are needed there within the next year or the war "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of a 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post

Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in the Middle East and Central Asia, said Thursday that victory in Afghanistan "is going to be ultimately similar to what we have achieved in Iraq.

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