Tactical Jenga vs. The Strategic Stopwatch

[William F. Owen]

What he's doing is attempting to show how outside considerations can interact with the realities of what's happening in the theater. The spikes show areas where local considerations might bump up against the external timeline and create domestic issues (like "is the surge working") and thus spark in-theater damage control (or adjustments to the external timeline).
.

So there's a tension between what the policy makes/politicians want, and the reality of progress on the ground? Ya Allah! Hold the Front Page!

...and the Jenga thing? The more you interact with it, the more likely it is to fall over? Stopwatch, unstoppable and predictable?

Maybe I've had too much coffee!