We have not yet reached a Harry Truman v Douglas MacArthur moment in Washington — the extraordinary day in April 1951 when the US President fired his top general for disagreeing with him on his Korean War policy.

Yet this much is now clear: a potential battle now looms between Barack Obama and his top generals over Afghanistan that could define, even destroy, his presidency.

After only nine months as Commander-in-Chief, President Obama has reached a critical point in determining whether to order a surge of additional troops into Afghanistan. It is a strategy that is being demanded by General Stanley McChrystal, his ground commander, General David Petraeus, the head of US Central Command, and by Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff — the most senior military officer in the US.

The reason we know that General McChrystal urgently wants more troops is because his brutally grim, and until last week secret, assessment of the war, which he said could be lost within a year without a troop surge, was leaked in full to The Washington Post’s famed investigative reporter, Bob Woodward.

The source of the leak has yet to be revealed but most believe that it must have come from a very high level within the Pentagon in a move designed to make clear to the wider public exactly what Mr Obama’s top general is demanding, and the growing sense of alarm within the military over the President’s delay in deciding what to do.

Inside the White House, Mr Obama has indeed ordered a lengthy and deliberative delay to decide what his Afghanistan strategy should be, only six months after announcing to great fanfare his plan for the war: a classic counter-insurgency mission to protect the Afghan population, destroy the Taleban and rebuild the country’s civilian infrastructure. General McChrystal was hand-picked to execute that mission.

Mr Obama has scheduled at least five meetings with his national security team over the next few weeks to re-examine his Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. Two factors are giving him pause over whether to send more troops, over and above the 21,000 additional forces he ordered to be sent in March, all of which have not even arrived yet. They are the disputed Afghan election, and the memory of Vietnam.

The stakes for Mr Obama, in the decision he must ultimately make, could not be higher.

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