He was charming, funny and above all blunt. General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and ISAF Commander in Afghanistan, set out to sell his assessment of the mission to a hardened international audience. In a speech at a London think-tank on Thursday, General McChrystal said the mission was so complicated and the history in Afghanistan so difficult to understand, that no ‘bumper sticker slogan’ was going to solve it.

“You run into the person who raises a finger and say here’s a solution. They can have my job!” said McChrystal.

The American general finds himself in the middle of a raging debate about Afghanistan. McChrystal was categorical: Extra troops may not win the war but not enough troops could lose it. But the Obama administration is treading carefully as NATO allies and even the U.S. President's own democratic colleagues start to doubt the commitment to Afghanistan.

General McChrystal admits the situation in some ways is deteriorating.

“Violence is up and it is not up only because there are more collation forces. It’s up because the insurgency has grown. We need to reverse the current trends and time does matter. Waiting does not prolong a favourable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely. Public support will not last indefinitely.” said McChrystal.

And he was equally as blunt when talking about the history of the NATO mission there.

“Our manner of operating distances us physically and psychologically from the people we seek to protect. You need to connect with people,” says McChrystal adding, “We’ve under resourced our operations, in some areas we’ve underperformed, in some areas we’ve under-coordinated. We’ve struggled with unity of effort, national agreements, chains of command that are complex to say the least.”

What he did not admit so openly is that any more engagement with the Afghan people will inevitably lead to more military and civilian casualties in the short term.

But General McChrystal did begin articulating a new mission statement for Afghanistan. He said winning there doesn’t mean beating the Taliban but making the Afghan people safe and secure.

And he divulged two other things that commanders rarely say publicly: We can’t debate a new strategy forever, three months tops, and reconciliation with the Taliban is inevitable.