U.S. Can Live With an Afghan Loss

"It was Leon being Leon." This is the take you get when you ask Obama administration officials exactly what it was that Defense Secretary Leon Panetta meant when he said last week that the administration wanted to move troops in Afghanistan from "a combat role to a training, advise and assist role…hopefully by mid- to the latter part of 2013." Panetta, that is, was just blurting something out, as is his wont. The administration didn't so much walk back Panetta's remark as frog-march it. CIA director David Petraeus complained in congressional testimony that Panetta's comments had been "over-analyzed." White House spokesman Jay Carney explained that the Pentagon chief was speaking of what "could happen," not what had been decided. A senior NATO official told me that Panetta's comments should be understood in an "aspirational" light. And so on.