Via Salon:

The latest Steele gaffe, you might have heard by now, involves the war in Afghanistan. In an amateur video posted on YouTube, the RNC chairman calls it "a war of Obama's choosing" and "not something the United States had actively prosecuted or wanted to engage in." (Apparently, Steele wasn't paying attention to the news back in, say, October 2001.) He also says that history has shown that "the one thing you don't do is engage in a land war in Afghanistan."

And now Kristol has posted a plea at the Weekly Standard for Steele to step down:

Perfectly normal. Perfectly healthy. They meant to do that. Really.

Honestly: it's not like this was an off the cuff comment. This was a fairly length statement that doesn't much leeway to say it's being misinterpreted. And it's well off message.