Gen. McChrystal is no Gen. MacArthur
I was out of town when the kerfuffle about the article about Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Rolling Stone magazine became public.
Now that I am back and have read the article I am amazed at how little it takes to get a general fired. I mean, for pity’s sake, this was not something on the order of Harry Truman and Douglas MacArthur. It was not as if McChrystal was seriously criticizing Obama’s war strategy, like MacArthur did about Truman. How could he? This was the strategy, after all, that McChrystal had successfully persuaded Obama to sign off on and one that McChrystal’s successor, Gen. David Petraeus has pledged to continue. I venture to say one hears more venomous remarks around the average office water cooler than what I read in the article.
Contrary to what some in the media write this was not a sign of a “dysfunctional civilian-military relationship.” To me it is a sign of posturing on the part of President Obama and, perhaps, an attempt to burnish his hawk credibility, and to sweep under the rug, at least for a little bit longer that his Afghanistan strategy is not working.
Let’s cut to the chase. As I see it successful counterinsurgency doctrine comes with a price; the commitment to stay for years and years, if necessary. When President Obama announced his latest surge last fall it came with an exit time, next year. Although one hears the usual rightwing objections, setting an exit date will only encourage the Taliban it is unlikely the American public will stand for keeping the current number of forces beyond next summer, when troops are scheduled to start exiting. And clearly that is far too soon to win at counterinsurgency. So, in that sense the war was already lost.
And that assumes the counterinsurgency strategy is workable. And there is reason to be doubtful about that, as this recent article in Tom Dispatch details.
What will most likely happen is that both sides, the U.S. and the afghan government, such as it is, will make polite noises and the U.S. will say to President Karzai, see you, wouldn’t want to be you
This future seems even more likely given recent news. Let me cite just a few examples.
A recent report by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the system the United States used for the past five years to rate the readiness of Afghanistan’s Army and police force was seriously flawed and there was no reliable way to measure any progress.
Despite spending by the United States of $27 billion on the training of Afghan security forces since 2002, the report found that even top-rated Afghan units could not operate independently and that the ratings of many security forces overstated their actual capabilities. In addition, the report said some parts of the country were so dangerous that assessment teams could not rate the security forces in those areas at all.
Rep. Nita M. Lowey (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs, said that she would strip $3.9 billion in aid for Afghanistan from next year’s spending bill over concerns about rampant graft in the country and alleged efforts by President Hamid Karzai’s government to derail corruption probes.
According to a National Journal article last month U.S. forces are encountering record numbers of improvised explosive devices. Every measure of the danger has neared or exceeded the records set last August, according to the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization,
From the last (relatively) quiet month, February, through the end of May, the number of U.S. and allied troops killed by IEDs per month rose 13 percent; the number wounded was up 34 percent. Explosions that succeeded in inflicting casualties jumped by 40 percent; and the total number of IEDs encountered, including those that detonated harmlessly or were found and neutralized, increased by 43 percent to an unprecedented 1,128 in May — that’s more than 36 a day.
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