The National Security Council held a tense videoconference with Karl Eikenberry, the US ambassador to Afghanistan who brought the policy to its knees yesterday with the leak of a series of cables from him to White House officials urging withdrawal. Eikenberry held his ground in the teleconference, and the President appears to have been moved by it:

But Eikenberry — who also briefed the White House by teleconference yesterday — reiterated his concerns. The ambassador told the NSC not to send additional troops to Afghanistan “without an exit strategy” and urged that the president to adopt a “purely civilian approach” with the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the lead, not the military. According to the NSC staffer, Eikenberry “wants a realignment” of USAID, the Afghanistan inspector general’s office and the State Department’s stabilization and reconstruction office. “He said POTUS wants that” — although President Obama was not in the meeting — and he hailed the arrival of the new USAID administrator-nominee, Rajiv Shah, “because he will not wage war when the org charts start changing.” [...]

Despite the dissatisfaction with Eikenberry’s apparent leak, according to the staffer, Obama “demanded” an exit strategy for the war “after Eikenberry’s cables.” [...] “They are pulling together the alternatives [Obama] requested” on refining options for resourcing the war, the NSC staffer continued. “They have until Friday to give him three new ones with withdrawal timetables.”

Eikenberry is just making public a simmering discontent with the mission in Afghanistan and in particular the lack of a partner in the central government. Jack Murtha and Carl Levin have been pressing against a large troop increase for weeks. Eikenberry’s pronouncement just gave this new resonance.

UPDATE: Could the realities and the human costs of war be weighing on Obama?