Brigadier General Ben Hodges, head of US forces in the south, told AFP on Thursday the offensive in outlying districts of Kandahar city could be delayed by two or three months.
A lack of Afghan army and police units meant US special forces were helping villages organise militia to protect themselves against insurgents.
Apart from the shortage of Afghan forces, McChrystal said more political work was required in Kandahar to ensure support from local leaders and the local population.
"I don't intend to hurry it. We want to make sure we've got conditions shaped politically with the local leaders, with the people.
"We really want the people to understand, and literally pull the operation towards them, as opposed to feel as though that they're being forced with something they didn't want."
The organization of local defense forces is a heartening detail. The bigger point is that we want the locals to be receptive to our (US/Coalition/Afghan government) presence rather than view it as an invasion. As I've mentioned, there is a big difference between pacifying a location that sees us as liberators and one that sees us as invaders. Moving in too soon into a Taliban stronghold will make sure the latter condition is what we face.
The value of being seen as liberators is enhanced by our enemies' ruthlessness that contrasts our careful approach with their bloody-minded view of civilians. Point one:
Body parts in trees. Mud walls flattened. Corpses riddled with ball bearings.
NATO and the Afghan government on Thursday blamed a Taliban suicide bomber for the grisly scene at a wedding party where at least 40 people were killed by an intense explosion. But the Taliban claimed they played no role in the blast in the Arghandab district, an insurgent stronghold near the southern city of Kandahar.
Some are accusing NATO for an air strike, but government reaction does not--as it often does--blame us. We say we weren't involved. And the target is one that the Taliban or their al Qaeda allies would like to hit. The weight of opinion points to the enemy. Denials by some may simply indicate the gravity of the public relations defeat.
Another event helps to contrast our careful efforts with the enemy's casual attitude toward civilian deaths:
Taliban militants accused a seven-year-old boy of spying and hanged him earlier this week in Afghanistan's southern Helmand province, a local government official tells CBS News.
Provincial government spokesman Daud Ahmadi confirmed the incident which took place on Tuesday in the Taliban stronghold of Sangin, in Helmand. Ahmadi told CBS News' Fazul Rahim the boy was hanged in public after a Taliban commander read a verdict out loud, accusing the youth of spying for international forces.
It is worth it to delay a major effort to shape the Kandahar region so the people are less loyal to the Taliban. Move Taliban supporters to friendly or even neutral status, move fence sitters to friendly status, and bolster those already friendly. That's the key. Our enemies make our efforts to shape the views of enough people to carry out counter-insurgency in a generally friendly environment much more likely to succeed.
But if we fail in that effort to shape the battlefield, we will ultimately have to decide how we can defeat evil hearts and sick minds that cannot be persuaded with kind words, gentle handling, and rebuilding.
Sometimes, you just have to kill the enemy. It doesn't mean we relax our rules of engagement and risk more civilian casualties that make us look no better than the Taliban, but it could mean far more seeking out and killing the enemy.
