“Hello to Mattis?” asked Tom Ricks on his blog. “Jim Mattis, anyone?” added Ricks’ CNAS colleague Andrew Exum. (And, uh, me too.) Over at Commentary, Max Boot thought that appointing Mattis would unfortunately require “a delay of months while the new commander conducted his own assessment of the situation” — a delay that the U.S. could “ill-afford.”

So I asked Mattis what his take on all this was. The general declined my interview request, but his chief of media operations at Joint Forces Command, Kathleen Jabs, issued me the following statement: “General Mattis serves at the pleasure of the President, and is completely focused on his assignment as Commander, U.S. Joint Forces Command.”

You parse that however you’d like, because I’m not going to go there. After Mattis’s current job expires — basically, after the Senate confirms Army Gen. Raymond Odierno to helm Joint Forces Command — he’ll be out of command and facing retirement. Unless…

Last week, President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates nominated Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin — like Odierno, a former corps commander in Iraq — to take over for Odierno as the Iraq war’s final commander. Odierno’s official move to Joint Forces Command now sets off a flurry of speculation over whether the current commander there, Marine Gen. James Mattis, will either retire or become the Marine Corps’ next commandant.

In the face of pressure from Iraqi and U.S. forces, AQI has “fractured,” Lanza said, into three component groups: opportunists looking for cash in the absence of better choices; nationalists who want to drive the U.S. out and overthrow the Iraqi government; and ideologues like the leadership who buy into al-Qaeda’s larger conspiratorial worldview. It’s now almost entirely an Iraqi phenomenon, as opposed to the pre-surge AQI that was augmented by foreign fighters traveling to Iraq to attack U.S. and Iraqi forces and civilians and receiving cash from al-Qaeda’s leadership in the Pakistani tribal areas. “We see not as many, and very few, foreign fighters compared to what we have seen a few years ago,” Lanza said on a blogger conference call. By contrast, in 2008, an aide to Gen. David Petraeus, then the commander in Iraq, described the typical adherent, or “Mr. AQI,” as a foreign fighter who came to Iraq after being radicalized through images of U.S. forces torturing detainees at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo Bay.

The Iraqis that do join AQI rely on extortion to finance their attacks. “It’s through extortion, it’s through kidnapping, it’s through extortion of oil at the Baiji Oil Refinery and other facilities to get their money,” Lanza said. That’s a far cry from the days when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi wrote to Ayman al-Zawahiri for cash. It appears, Lanza said, that al-Qaeda Senior Leadership is moving resources to other franchises. (As we’ve seen with the rise of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.) That trend may accelerate now that al-Masri is dead. “They’re still looking for a way to expand they’re network, but he was their link outside of Iraq,” Lanza said.

AQI is still a capable force and has had recent high-profile successes in pulling off suicide car bombs in crowded areas. But its strategic objectives — plunging the country back into sectarian war — aren’t being achieved, and Iraq is down to levels of civilian violence comparable to January 2004. When I asked how many Iraqis support AQI, both as active fighters and as people who passively tolerate the extremists’ presence, Lanza said he couldn’t disaggregate that figure, but a rough estimate was between 1,500 and 2,000 Iraqis total. And that’s not so different from what the State Department’s intelligence branch pegged it at in 2007.

According to McChrystal’s command, however, there is no change in tactics. Or, rather, the only change in tactics is an increase in drone strikes under his six-month old command from his predecessor. Overall airstrikes, particularly from piloted aircraft, are indeed down under McChrystal. But “the two-in-one-day strikes you saw the other day may have been unusual from a press release standpoint,” McChrystal spokesman Tadd Sholtis, an Air Force lieutenant colonel, emailed, “but it wasn’t an operational aberration.”

Indeed, according to data provided by Sholtis, the first half of January has seen six airstrikes from remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) like the Reaper. December 2009 featured 14 so-called RPA strikes; while under McChrystal’s predecessor, Gen. David McKiernan, December 2008 featured three. From Sholtis, here’s the full monthly breakdown of those drone strikes since McChrystal took command in Afghanistan this summer, as compared to the previous year:

July 2009:  13 — July 2008: 15

August 2009:  14 — August 2008: 11

September 2009:  8 — September 2008: 5

October 2009:  11 — October 2008: 12

November 2009:  23  — November 2008: 12

December 2009:  14 — December 2008: 3

January 1 – January 14, 2009: 6 — January 2008: 3

The spike in recent months compared to the previous year looks like the result of a combination of factors. First, the increased operational tempo of U.S. troops fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan’s south and east, despite the (increasingly less relevant) traditional winter lull. Second, senior military leaders like Central Command’s Gen. David Petraeus and Iraq’s Gen. Raymond Odierno have spoken for months about accelerating the transfer of combat-support assets like surveillance drones to Afghanistan; and those drones can be outfitted with Hellfire missiles. “More strikes by these aircraft is probably best understood as a function of more ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] -and-strike capable assets flowing to the theater,” Sholtis said. And finally, the precision capabilities contained within the remotely-piloted drones satisfy McChrystal’s guidance for a “a higher degree of certainty, patience and restraint in employing air strikes,” in Sholtis’ phrase. Or, as a Marine officer quoted in The Washington Post put it, “It has pinpoint precision, and it limits collateral damage.”

And that’s the most important aspect of the increase in drone usage: it has occurred during an internationally validated reduction in U.S./NATO-attributable civilian casualties. A United Nations report released yesterday determined that the U.S. and its allies are responsible for 28 percent fewer civilian deaths in Afghanistan in 2009 than in 2008, a drop that the U.N. specifically attributed to McChrystal’s instructions to prioritize the protection of Afghan civilians. It looks like McChrystal’s command has found the sweet spot: an increase in aerial lethality that does not result in significant collateral damage.

For more on the air war in Afghanistan and McChrystal’s role in it, I can’t recommend this recent Wired piece by Noah Shachtman highly enough.

“Thank you so much for the question,” Odierno said.

“First, I interact every single day with — We probably meet personally three or four times a week. I have an office in the embassy that I man. But I also have about 300 people within MNF-I [Multinational Forces-Iraq] that are actually in the Embassy that are in support of economic, police, training, and other agencies, planning that are there every single day working with the Embassy, so we’re completely integrated at every level, we continue to be completely integrated. We’re updating this Joint Campaign Plan, which is– it’s a joint plan between Amb. Hill and myself. We are working this very hard, very closely together. It’s very important because it really is going to set what the deliverables are as we transition to civilian capacity-building once the military completes the capacity building.

“And the way I put it to all my people is: in 2003, we had a chance to do this, we didn’t do it quite right. We have a chance to do this now, and we have to make sure we’ve got the planning and the deliverables necessary to make sure this works as we reduce our presence. And we’re hand-in-hand doing a joint process with the embassy and I feel very comfortable with this.

“So I believe we have a real good system in place. Every meeting that I hold, we have a member of the Embassy at the meeting. So, I mean, I think our relationship is good. Amb. Hill and I work very closely together on a daily basis. As I tell him, the only thing Amb. Hill and I disagree on is that he’s a Red Sox fan and I’m a Yankee fan. So besides that we do pretty well.”

First of all: THE 2009 AMERICAN LEAGUE EAST CHAMPION NEW YORK YANKEES, once again the dominant team in Major League Baseball, clinched the AL East on Sunday after sweeping the Sox again.

Second of all: You make the call, but that sounded more like a defense of how the military/civilian process in place works in spite of the Odierno-Hill relationship than a defense of how it works because of it. The rivalry stuff at the end lightened the tone, but Odierno did not praise Hill once during that explanation, and said a lot more about how he’s put his people into the Embassy than how Hill and his people have taken charge of the diplomatic heavy lifting. But what do you really expect from a Red Sox fan besides empty boasting and a proclivity to come up short?

Indeed, Odierno said, there’s a case for staying in Iraq for the next two years and change: Iraq’s frontier position between the Arab Middle East and Iran; Iraq is “moving toward a nascent democracy and wants to move toward an open economy”; all this could “contribute to stability in the Middle East in the long term” and that’s “of strategic importance to us.” But that makes a case for  “allowing our forces to stay there through 2011″ militarily, not beyond, and Odierno does not say that the U.S. ought to keep troops there after the dates jointly agreed upon by the U.S. and Iraqi governments. The relationship that Iraq seeks with the U.S. is an “economic relationship, a security relationship, an educational relationship, technical exchanges,” not remaining dependent on the United States for providing security.

Bonus fact: conspicuously, Odierno did not include Iraq’s oil as a factor for remaining in Iraq, or as part of an enduring U.S.-Iraqi relationship. Just saying.

Odierno replied that it’s his job to present to Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia, Defense Secretary Gates and President Obama an assessment of those risks. “The important part is that we do not want to lose the security progress that has been made,” he said, noting that U.S. troops provide a “psychological” boost to Iraqi confidence. His concern is that a too-fast withdrawal will allow the “drivers of instability” to overtake that confidence. “We have to ensure that we don’t take enough risk [in accelerating withdrawal] that ethno-sectarian violence is able to continue, for example, over Arab-Kurd tensions,” or allows al-Qaeda to reassert itself, or places too much stress on the Iraqi political system. (Odierno fears that the political system, in an over-eager withdrawal could “fall,” which seems at odds with his presentation of a surprisingly robust Iraq in his opening statement.) “The plan we have, I believe,” Odierno said, “allows us to withdrawal deliberately  and maintain what I believe is an appropriate level of security that the Iraqi security forces ultimately can sustain.”

He and Petraeus “work very carefully” to identify “any capabilities that we have and no longer need that can be used in Afghanistan.” That means combat-support elements like intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance. He said his plan has “flexibility to speed up [withdrawal] if I think the situation on the ground allows it, or to slow down, and I will continue to make those judgments as we move forward.” Odierno said that getting down to 120,000 troops by October’s end is ahead of what he planned, thanks to “improvements out in Anbar province.”

All U.S. military actions in Iraq now occur “by, with and through” the Iraqi security forces, “within the framework of the security agreement.” Odierno praised the departure of U.S. combat forces from Iraqi cities on June 30 as a “major milestone” whose “positive psychological impact has been profound.” He called the Iraqi security forces capable.

Nine months after implementing the security agreement and three months after leaving the cities “we continue to make consistent…progress,” Odierno said. Reduced attacks “of all types” to levels not seen since the “summer of 2003.” He’s got charts! Overall attacks have decreased 85 percent over the last two years, to 594 in August of 2009. “Ethno-sectarian deaths” have decreased 77 percent. Only 19 ethno-sectarian incidents over Ramadan 2009, compared to 978 in 2006. There are “high-profile attacks” that continue, but Odierno brings out stats to show their decline even after June 30. “There was a clear security lapse on 19 August in Baghdad, but I do not believe it was the result of any systematic security problems,” Odierno said, referring to massive Baghdad bombings occurring that day, saying the government “responded effectively … enabled by U.S. forces, and they continue to reassess their security posture.” Extremist efforts to re-spark sectarian violence  “have failed.”

“You can honestly feel a difference” amongst the people in Baghdad, Odierno said. Lots of praise for the Iraqi security force training effort. Iraqis conducting “more and more precision intelligence-driven operations,” much of which are “unilateral,” and even rely on their own “human and technical intelligence.” Strides in Iraqi counterterrorism operations, particularly with Iraqi special operations forces.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq has been “reduced” to a “small, ideological core.” They’re still in the north, hoping to go back to Anbar and Baghdad. But he’s working with Iraqi security force to “deny extremist safe havens and reduce the flow of foreign fighters and lethal aid into Iraq.” The Sons of Iraq ex-insurgent militiamen program appears to be going well, with 5000 more transitioning into government jobs, thanks to the government “understanding its importance … to building trust between Sunnis and the government.” The Maliki government says the SOI will be integrated by the end of the year, aspirationally, although Odierno said he doesn’t believe the government will meet the deadline.

Security is “not yet enduring,” with “drivers of instability” remaining. Odierno said “we cannot focus on immediate and traditional security threats alone” as Iraq rebuilds its institutions and must look at challenges like “communal and factional struggles for resources” and government incapacity. The January elections are “critical for determining the path Iraq will take in the future.” Parliament needs to figure out quickly what form the elections will take, such as open lists of candidates or the closed-list system that resulted in big factional blocs elected over the last two elections. Decades of “infrastructural neglect” require “substantial capital investment.” There has been “some progress” in developing a “culture of accountability,” though government corruption remains high. Still disputed internal boundaries in the north between Arabs and Kurds that al-Qaeda seeks to exploit; Odierno “strongly support[s]” United Nations mediation.

Now: about that withdrawal. “Eleven months from now, our commission will end,” leaving an advisory & training and “limited” counterterrorism mission coordinated with Iraqis. By Aug. 31, 2010, there will be six Advisory and Assistance Brigades of about 50,000 troops. The drawdown — 124,000 troops and eleven combat brigades today, going down to 120,000 by October’s end — will “sustain stability,” he pledged. Gotten rid of 200 bases and will continue to close them, as well as gotten rid of about 30,000 contractors. Six headquarters elements of Odierno’s command will consolidate to three by August. He said he’ll still need the emergency commanders’ piggybank known as CERP. “I cannot overstate the importance of information operations” continuing in order to prevent insurgent messages from taking root, Odierno said. “The way we drawdown our forces will influence … the nature of the new Iraq,” he added. “Success will be defined by our ability to support Iraq’s developing institutional capacity, from governance to economics.”

“Strategic goal remains to foster a long-term partnership with a sovereign, stable Iraq,” Odierno concluded. “I’m confident in the way ahead.”

Violence has recently risen in Iraq. But with the U.S. military under significant restriction of its freedom of operation and the Iraqi government wishing to show itself in control, the burden falls on Iraqi shoulders. Odierno said he is focused on a thorough transition to Iraqi ministerial capability for handling ongoing instability, and has updated the Joint Campaign Plan to spell out how the transition should occur. He’s scheduled to testify this morning to the House Armed Services Committee, and the transition’s course will be the subject of concern.

Army brigades leaving Iraq must have fifteen months of so-called “dwell” time at home before redeployment, unless Defense Secretary Gates and the Army’s leadership decides to change that policy (and the odds on that are long, since Gates painfully shortened dwell time in 2007 to support the Iraq surge). You can’t just pick a brigade out of Iraq and send it to Afghanistan. But the Institute for the Study of War — run by the Kagans — has put together a list of what brigades could become available in the next couple months for a prospective Afghanistan deployment, should Obama decide another troop increase is necessary and supports a sound strategy. Kudos to the Kagans — yes, I said it — whom I criticized last week for not providing precisely what this document outlines.

In an interview with The Washington Post last week, Mullen said it might not be possible to fill requests from McChrystal for new troops.

If the demand for troops in Afghanistan goes up and is not offset by reductions in Iraq, it would delay the ability of the Army and Marine Corps to give heavily deployed ground troops more time at home between combat tours.

“That’s a huge concern that I have,” Mullen said in the interview. He noted that the concern was shared by Gen. George W. Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, as well as by other service chiefs.

The irony! The sheer, stupendous, absurd irony! Afghanistan was an under-resourced mission for years, all this time neglected by the Bush administration and reporters like myself in favor of the entirely-elective Iraq occupation, and now comes a warning from Adm. Mullen — which, by the way, I’m not sure the Post printed last week, though I may have missed something — that the Iraq pullout would need to accelerate in order to supply a second Afghanistan troop increase this year. Sensible enough, in theory — there are only so many soldiers and Marines and intelligence assets and equipment and material and support staff and so on; and the laws of physics suggest they can’t be in two places at once; and overtaxing the ground force is expressly counterproductive to U.S. aims in either theater. Now, you could do what the Bush administration did, and insist loudly that there are no trade-offs to be made and we can do it all — and I truly can’t wait for the Peter Feaver post telling me that that never happened — but that would be irresponsible.

Assume Mullen and the chiefs are correct. As a political question, I wonder how this will play out. No matter what he chooses, Obama will be criticized by the right, so bake that into the cake. The question is whether he wants to be criticized for underresourcing the Afghanistan mission he’s called a “war of necessity” or wants to be criticized for gambling with what he’s called a “responsible” way out of Iraq at a time when civilian deaths are spiking. Will anti-escalation liberals find a pretext to support a measured pace of withdrawal from Iraq? How will Gen. Raymond Odierno react to having his very staggered withdrawal plans mucked with because of Gen. McChrystal? How will Gen. David Petraeus adjudicate such a tension, should it manifest itself?

It’s almost like it’s inherently problematic to wage two protracted wars at the same time…