McChrystal clear: Even with more troops, victory not certain
R.J. Matson/Post-Dispatch
To read Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s assessment of the war in Afghanistan is to reach some disturbing conclusions about a conflict in which the United States has been engaged for eight years:
- It’s not really a “war” after all, but a “different kind of fight,” a “war of ideas” fought in tandem with traditional military operations against three or more insurgent groups. However the conflict is defined, Gen. McChrystal, the commander of the International Security Assistance Force, says we’re losing it.
- Whatever you call it, we’ve been fighting it all wrong. “A focus by ISAF intelligence on kinetic targeting and a failure to bring together what is known about the political and social realm have hindered ISAF’s comprehension of the critical aspects of Afghan society,” Gen. McChrystal writes. In military-speak, “kinetic targeting” means deciding who and what to bomb or attack.
- The Afghan government of President Hamid Karzai is corrupt, inefficient and worse than useless; the Afghan people don’t trust anyone perceived as being on the government’s side.
- Even as U.S. casualties are mounting, the tactic of rolling through Afghan towns in armored vehicles is counterproductive to the cause. “Preoccupied by force protection, ISAF has operated in a manner that distances itself, both physically and psychologically, from the people they seek to protect,” Gen. McChrystal writes.
- The conflict still is salvageable, but only barely, and only if the United States and its allies commit more troops and civilian personnel to the cause; puts them out among the people and focuses on winning the “war of ideas.” That doesn’t mean PR efforts; it means real political, economic and security gains.
Gen. Stanley McChrystal (Los Angeles Times photo)
Gen. McChrystal’s report was intended for President Barack Obama and Defense Secretary Robert Gates. It became public Monday, in redacted form, after Bob Woodward of The Washington Post obtained a copy. Its early publication has amplified a debate that Mr. Obama had hoped to postpone until later this fall.
Many congressional Democrats are leery of committing more troops to Afghanistan. Most Republicans, remembering that the Taliban government harbored Osama bin Laden during the planning for the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are reflexively in favor of “victory.”
Thoughtful people on both sides of the debate will benefit from reading Gen. McChrystal’s assessment of what victory means. The former head of the Joint Special Operations Command is nobody’s idea of a kinder, gentler warrior. But his vision of the way forward has more to do with diplomacy and politics than it does with military tactics.
It recalls Gen. David H. Petraeus’ recommendations in 2006 for changing tactics in Iraq — getting troops out of fortified bases and into the streets; understanding local cultures and forging alliances with local leaders.
But Afghanistan, with its rugged mountain terrain, its stone-age infrastructure, its tribal alliances and its sad history as “the graveyard of empires,” poses a fiercer challenge: How many more troops will it take to pacify a nation like this, and for how long?
Given the short timelines and political realities, it may be that it can’t be done at all, even with billions more dollars and thousands more lives, and there are no guarantees. We can’t win this one with “kinetic targeting.”
Gen. McChrystal finally has told the nation what it got itself into eight years ago. No commander wants to say he can’t accomplish the mission. But reading between the lines, that’s what this one has done.
As usual, I have the solution. Instead of a surge, I suggest, the “Round-up” strategy. Not round-up as in rounding up all the bad guys. Round-up as in weed killer. We get about fifty Piper Cherokees with crop dusting equipment and spray every poppy field in the entire country. Without that drug dough, what are they going to spend? Rocks? Anyone who thinks they can conquor that place is probably going to be against the round-up strategy beause they are probably smoking some of those poppy products. Its like the old Afghan saying, “it is easy for an Army to march into Afghanistan, but very difficult to march out.” Combine this with some occasional precision bombing runs and special ops raids and that’s about the best you can do.
So how is it that a classified report gets leaked to the press? That is an outrage. Whoever leaked this should be put in jail. Mr. Woodward should be put in jail. There are certain documents that need to be kept secret so that Mr. Obama and the military leaders can make the best decisions without slanted public pressure.
The General said we need more troops. This Paper spins that into ‘We Lost Get Out Now’. How many times have I heard this paper and most Democrats (Liberals) say something to the affect ‘That idiot Bush took his eye off the ball. The war is not in Iraq it’s in Afghanistan’? You all said this is were we should be. Could it have been you were trying to hide the fact that you will stand up and fight for nothing? 9-11 was our fault? Since the fight now in this papers opinion is no longer in Afghanistan wrer would you send the troops in order to take the fight to the enemy? Or should we just wait and hope?
It seems our politicians will never understand the realities of military intervention anywhere in the world.
1. Our enemies have a completely different thought processes, cultures, and motives than the USA or the Western world as a whole. They reject peace and favor of tyranny.
2. If circumstances demand the loss of even one U.S. service member in combat they justify the full application of our military might and civilian support. GO BIG OR STAY HOME!
3. We do not have the practical means and moral authority to force freedom on cultures that have rejected it for centuries. We can try to lead by example, but you can’t push a rope.
4. If other nations and the U.N. will not support and cooperate in our military efforts it is unconscionable to force our U.S. troops to die in yet another unilateral losing cause.
5. Cruise missiles and B52s are much more persuasive than foot soldiers in responding to unprovoked attacks on the USA.
Bring the troops home and save them for our own national defense imperatives.
@SoCoBoy–
If you read only the headlines, “General says more troops are needed,” you are missing the meaning of McChrystal’s report…and for sure, that’s what most headlines said. Most TV and news accounts reported the “more troops” aspect and went no further.
But the report recommended LOTS more troops, most of whom would be tasked in long-term counterinsurgency operations, not combat. The troops would have to get out of their bases. dismount from their armored vehicles, and live and work among the people of Afghanistan, probably for years. Do you have a sense that Congress would approve such an open-ended, largely non-combat, mission? Our guys would go out in enemy territory without most of their tactical weapons. There could be a huge upsurge in casualties. Do you have a sense America is ready for that?
McChrystal also said huge numbers of civilian advisers are needed to help shore up Afghanistan’s corrupt government and build democratic institutions. Do you have a sense Congress will want to pay for that?
Many of the new troops that already are being sent to Afghanistan are there as trainers for the Afghan security forces. As it happens, the Afghan security forces there make Iraq’s look like the Delta force. If it took six years to get Iraq’s army into fighting condition, it might take 12 years to get Afghanistan’s into shape…and that’s assuming that the government could somehow become less corrupt.
McChrystal’s report fully explains the political, social and cultural obstacles that have to be overcome for something like “victory” to be achieved. As a smart soldier, he knows it’s way more complicated than just sending more troops…probably more complicated than Congress is capable of dealing with. McChrystal, in my opinion, recognizes that the political reality is that Congress and the American people don’t have the will to take on the kind of mission that he describes.
You can’t, he says, continue to “double down” on the number of troops and expect victory. Those troops have to be employed in ways that large numbers of U.S. troops haven’t been used since the occupation of Japan…and in Japan, there weren’t insurgent groups trying to kill them.
I urge you to read not just the headline, but the primary source, a link to which is found in the editorial.
Kevin I did read it. The point is this was the War the left said was ‘The Right War’. The one you all pointed to as where we should be insrtead of Iraq. How many times did Harry Ried or Joe Biden sit therre and say Bush took his eye off the ball by not putting our resources in Afghanistan? Personally I say pull all the troops out put them on our borders and turn that part of the globe into glass. As A# put it. Cruise Missles and B52’s work just fine.
The lessons we refuse to learn. Only 40 years ago: If we just escalate a little more, just a few thousand more troops, light at the end of the tunnel, the will to win, if we kill enough of them they’ll give up, bomb ‘em back to the stone age, if we let them fall neighboring countries will fall. When the French gave up in Vietnam we went in to show them how it’s done. The Soviet Union was in Afghanistan for 15 years and went home with their tails between their legs, and now we’re gonna show them how it’s done.
What defines victory? How will we know when we’ve won? When Afghanistan is a democratic country? When we’ve converted them all to Christianity? When we’ve killed them all? When we find Bin Laden? Maybe partition the country into North and South Afghanistan?
Get out of Afghanistan and Iraq. It’s Vietnam all over again. Corrupt leaders that aren’t really on our side, an enemy that can’t be identified or engaged, goals that are unachievable, objectives that keep changing, casualties that keep mounting. Where in Washington will they put the Afghanistan Wall?
Why has failure been embedded in the DNA of the Democrat Party? To re-live the glorious defeat of Vietnam? Believe it or not, defeat and inaction can have terrible consequences for this country, including providing sanctuary for very, very bad people that fly airplanes into buildings. I’d hate to be in the military on patrol in some Third World hellhole, and my commander-in-chief won’t send backup, and declares that he isn’t interested in victory. President Obama can just withdraw the military, blame President Bush, and spend money to fund his joke of a health care plan. I hope it covers subway bombings and terrorist nerve gas attacks when the bad guys decide to fight over here rather than over there!
Certified is right. Get out of foreign wars!!! If it is necessary to eliminate terrorist training facilities, employ mercenaries. The job would be done more effectively and more cheaply.
Alas, B-52s and cruise missiles don’t work just fine in Afghanistan, which has very few — if any — static targets of military value. You will recall we bombed the hell out of Afghanistan’s Tora Bora region in 2001 trying to kill bin Laden and succeeded mostly in turning large rocks into small ones.
Clearly we could turn the country into glass, as you say, or “bomb them forward into the stone age,” as someone else once said. But we’d be killing mostly innocent people and ending any hope for peace with the Islamic world, creating more terrorists, etc., etc.
You’ll also recall that we did, in fact, succeed in topping the Taliban government, which Democrats and Republicans alike decided was a worthy goal. But after we got distracted in Iraq, we had too few troops to hold the country against their comeback, and as McChrystal suggests, followed the wrong strategy for eight years.
The question now is whether we cut our losses or try, at great cost, to do it the right way.