Tweet
The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan says something in London that would get you denounced on Fox News:
…a few days ago, just before we left to travel here, a bus south of Kandahar struck an improvised explosive device (IED) killing 30 Afghan civilians. That is tragic.
On the one hand, you might say that the Afghan people would recoil against the Taliban who left that IED. To a degree, they do, but we must also understand that they recoil against us because they might think that, if we were not there, neither would be the IED. Therefore, we indirectly
caused the IED to be there. Second, we said that we would protect them, but we did not. Sometimes, then, the most horrific events caused by the insurgents continue to reinforce in the minds of the Afghan people a mindset that coalition forces are either ineffective, or at least that their presence in Afghanistan is not in their interest. That does not happen all of the time. There are times when they feel differently, but you have to put things in that context to understand what we must do.
Sniff the Patchouli. There are those who think the behavior of the U.S. in Afghanistan from 2002 to 200… say, 8 amounts to near-criminal negligence. Guess what? The commanding general is one of them. Similarly, there are those who doubt McChrystal’s sincerity when it comes to population protection. This is going way far out into blunt rhetorical territory. And McChrystal is 100 percent fucking right. If the objective is the perspective of the Afghan civilian concerned about getting blown up by an IED, it’s that civilian whose assessment of blame for the IED matters, and military and civilian leadership ignores that at their peril. McChrystal is serving notice that he won’t ignore it.
My fellow progressives can find reasons to criticize McChrystal, and I have no doubt they will. I will also find reason to criticize McChrystal. But it should be placed on the balance sheet that no serving military commander has ever gone this far, rhetorically and actually, to emphasize the protection of the Afghan people from harm. It’s precisely that focus that’s causing the more mouth-breathing factions of the right to press an assault from a different direction. McChrystal is not myopic and he’s also not insubordinate. On the Obama strategy review, he said in London, "The process of going through a very detailed, policy-level debate, is incredibly important and incredibly healthy. The president led that very effectively, and so I think this is a very necessary process to go through so we come to a clear decision and then move forward." Disagree with what he says and what he advocates, by all means, but let’s have a thorough presentation of what that actually is.
Update: McChrystal on Iran:
Iran, of course, being, you know, in such proximity to Afghanistan and having significant influence inside Afghanistan, is a big player. They, in my view, they have a lot of very positive influence inside Afghanistan, some of it cultural, some of it financial, just things that any neighbor would have to try to build the stability. I think that if Iran takes a very mature look at a stable Afghanistan and support the government of Afghanistan, then we’ll be — we’ll be in good shape. If they were to choose not to do that, and they were to choose to support insurgents, I think that would be a significant miscalculation.
3 Comments
Support this site!
Subscribe to the newsletter
Advertise on Firedoglake
Send
us your tips
Make us your homepage
About ATTACKERMAN
RSS/XML Feed
:clapping:
Damn. I think my head just exploded.
Y’know, whether you doubt his sincerity or not, it is just good, logical critical thinking to actually begin to understand not just the direct implications of the deployment of military power, but the indirect implications and the PERCEIVED implications, which are real and have real consequences.
I’m actually kind of sad that there’s no way to “win” this engagement, because this is sounding like a leader who not only could win, but deserves to….
mikey
I’m not sure what heavy breathing right wing assault on McChrystal it is you are talking about. Are there any links to these? The right has been uniformly supportive of the counterinsurgency he wants to continue, as they were of the COIN effort in Iraq. The multi-faceted layers of political, civil, military and economic that characterized Petraeus’ doctrine in Iraq (you know, that evil surge that didn’t work) holds some applicable lessons for Afghanistan. I hardly think conservatives are the ones that would disagree with McChrystal here.
The problem is this: COIN requires a certain troop-to-population ratio. We do not have it at this time in Afghanistan. Consequently, the method everyone applauds above cannot work without additional troops. If we like the full-spectrum warfare approach of COIN, then we need to provide the resources and reinforcements needed to carry them out. Speaking hypothetically, you can’t give the military a 100,000-man mission, and then send them only 50,000 men.
They could do a 100,000-man mission with maybe 60,000, but not 50,000. They’re not the freakin’ Spartan 300 after all, though our own illogic and lack of reasoning could very well end up putting them in that position.