Posted on 09/27/2009 3:19:21 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Tom Engelhardt: Petraeus, McChrystal, And The Surgettes On Next Moves In Afghanistan
Gen. Stanley McChrystal, America's military commander in Afghanistan, tells David Martin the spread of violence in that country is worse than he expected.
PHOTO Gen. David Petraeus (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) STORIES Poll: Afghanistan Troop Increase Unpopular U.S. Commander May Revise Troop Request (CBS) Tom Engelhardt, co-founder of the American Empire Project, runs the Nation Institute's TomDispatch.com. He is the author of The End of Victory Culture, a history of the Cold War and beyond, as well as of a novel, The Last Days of Publishing. He also edited The World According to TomDispatch: America in the New Age of Empire (Verso, 2008.) This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.
Front and center in the debate over the Afghan War these days are General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal, Afghan war commander, whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- almost eight years and at least $220 billion later, the war is a complete disaster -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama; Admiral Michael "Mike" Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who has been increasingly vocal about a "deteriorating" war and the need for more American boots on the ground; and the president himself, who blitzed every TV show in sight last Sunday and Monday for his health reform program, but spent significant time expressing doubts about sending more American troops to Afghanistan. ("I'm not interested in just being in Afghanistan for the sake of being in Afghanistan... or sending a message that America is here for the duration.")
On the other hand, here's someone you haven't seen front and center for a while: General David Petraeus. He was, of course, George W. Bush's pick to lead the president's last-ditch effort in Iraq. He was the poster boy for Bush's military policies in his last two years. He was the highly praised architect and symbol of "the surge." He appeared repeatedly, his chest/>a mass of medals and ribbons, for heavily publicized, widely televised congressional testimony, complete with charts and graphs, that was meant, at least in part, for the American public. He was the man who, to use an image from that period which has recently resurfaced, managed to synchronize the American and Baghdad "clocks," pacifying for a time both the home and war fronts.
He never met a journalist, as far as we can tell, he didn't want to woo. (And he clearly won over the influential Tom Ricks, then of the Washington Post, who wrote The Gamble, a best-selling paean to him and his sub-commanders.) From the look of it, he's the most political general to come down the pike since, in 1951 in the midst of the Korean War, General Douglas MacArthur said his goodbyes to Congress after being cashiered by President Truman for insubordination -- for, in effect, wanting to run his own war and the foreign policy that went with it. It was Petraeus who brought Vietnam-era counterinsurgency doctrine (COIN) back from the crypt, overseeing the writing of a new Army counterinsurgency manual that would make it central to both the ongoing wars and what are already being referred to as the "next" ones.
Before he left office, Bush advanced his favorite general to the head of U.S. Central Command, which oversees the former president's Global War on Terror across the energy heartlands of the planet from Egypt to Pakistan. The command is, of course, especially focused on Bush's two full-scale wars: the Iraq War, now being pursued under Petraeus's former subordinate, General Ray Odierno, and the Afghan War, for which Petraeus seems to have personally handpicked a new commanding general, Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations, McChrystal had operated in Iraq and was also part of an Army promotion board headed by Petraeus that advanced the careers of officers committed to counterinsurgency. To install McChrystal in May, Obama abruptly sacked the then-Afghan war commander, General David McKiernan, in what was then considered, with some exaggeration, a new MacArthur moment.
On taking over, McChrystal, who had previously been a counterterrorism guy (and isn't about to give that up, either), swore fealty to counterinsurgency doctrine (that is, to Petraeus) by proclaiming that the American goal in Afghanistan must not be primarily to hunt down and kill Taliban insurgents, but to "protect the population." He also turned to a "team" of civilian experts, largely gathered from Washington think-tanks, a number of whom had been involved in planning out Petraeus's Iraq surge of 2007, to make an assessment of the state of the war and what needed to be done. Think of them as the Surgettes.
As in many official reassessments, the cast of characters essentially guaranteed the results before a single meeting was held. Based on past history and opinions, this team could only provide one Petraeus-approved answer to the war: more -- more troops, up to 40,000-45,000 of them, and other resources for an American counterinsurgency operation without end. Hence, even if McChrystal's name is on it, the report slipped to Bob Woodward which just sandbagged the president has a distinctly Petraeusian shape to it. In a piece linked to Woodward's bombshell in the Washington Post, Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung wrote of unnamed officials in Washington who claimed "the military has been trying to push Obama into a corner." The language in the coverage elsewhere has been similar.
There is, wrote DeYoung a day later, now a "rupture" between the military "pushing for an early decision to send more troops" and civilian policymakers "increasingly doubtful of an escalating nation-building effort." Nancy Youssef of McClatchy News wrote about how "mixed signals" from Washington were causing "increasing ire from U.S. commanders in Afghanistan"; a group of McClatchy reporters talked of military advocates of escalation feeling "frustration" over "White House dithering." David Sanger of the New York Times described "a split between an American military that says it needs more troops now and an American president clearly reluctant to leap into that abyss." "Impatient" is about the calmest word you'll see for the attitude of the military top command right now.
Buyer's Remorse, the Afghan War, and the President
In the midst of all this, between Admiral Mullen and General McChrystal is, it seems, a missing man. The most photogenic general in our recent history, the man who created the doctrine and oversees the war, the man who is now shaping the U.S. Army (and its future plans and career patterns), is somehow, at this crucial moment, out of the Washington spotlight. This last week General Petraeus was, in fact, in England, giving a speech and writing an article for the (London) Times laying out his basic "protect the population" version of counterinsurgency and praising our British allies by quoting one of their great imperial plunderers. ("If Cecil Rhodes was correct in his wonderful observation that 'being an Englishman is the greatest prize in the lottery of life,' and I'm inclined to think that he was, then the second greatest prize in the lottery of life must be to be a friend of an Englishman, and based on that, the more than 230,000 men and women in uniform who work with your country's finest day by day are very lucky indeed, as am I.") Only at mid-week, with Washington aboil, did he arrive in the capital for a counterinsurgency conference at the National Press Club and quietly "endorse" "General McChrystal's assessment." Whatever the look of things, however, it's unlikely that Petraeus is actually on the sidelines at this moment of heightened tension.
He is undoubtedly still The Man.
So much is, of course, happening just beyond the sightlines of those of us who are mere citizens of this country, which is why inference and guesswork are, unfortunately, the order of the day. Read any account in a major newspaper right now and it's guaranteed to be chock-a-block full of senior officials and top military officers who are never "authorized to speak," but nonetheless yak away from behind a scrim of anonymity. Petraeus may or may not be one of them, but the odds are reasonable that this is still a Petraeus Moment.
If so, Obama has only himself to blame. He took up Afghanistan ("the right war") in the presidential campaign as proof that, despite wanting to end the war in Iraq, he was tough. (Why is it that a Democratic candidate needs a war or threat of war to trash-talk about in order to prove his "strength," when doing so is obviously a sign of weakness?) Once in office, Obama compounded the damage by doubling down his bet on the war. In March, he introduced a "comprehensive new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan" in his first significant public statement on the subject, which had expansion written all over it. He also agreed to send in 21,000 more troops (which, by the way, Petraeus reportedly convinced him to do). In August, in another sign of weakness masquerading as strength, before an unenthusiastic audience at a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, he unnecessarily declared: "This is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity." All of this he will now pay for at the hands of Petraeus, or if not him, then a coterie of military men behind the latest push for a new kind of Afghan War.
As it happens, this was never Obama's "war of necessity." It was always Petraeus's. And the new report from McChrystal and the Surgettes is undoubtedly Petraeus's progeny as well. It seems, in fact, cleverly put together to catch a cautious president, who wasn't cautious enough about his war of choice, in a potentially devastating trap. The military insistence on quick action on a troop decision sets up a devastating choice for the president: "Failure to provide adequate resources also risks a longer conflict, greater casualties, higher overall costs, and ultimately, a critical loss of political support. Any of these risks, in turn, are likely to result in mission failure." Go against your chosen general and the failure that follows is yours alone. (Unnamed figures supposedly close to McChrystal are already launching test balloons, passed on by others, suggesting that the general might resign in protest if the president doesn't deliver -- a possibility he has denied even considering.) On the other hand, offer him somewhere between 15,000 and 45,000 more American troops as well as other resources, and the failure that follows will still be yours.
It's a basic lose-lose proposition and, as journalist Eric Schmitt wrote in a New York Times assessment of the situation, "it will be very hard to say no to General McChrystal." No wonder the president and some of his men are dragging their feet and looking elsewhere. As one typically anonymous "defense analyst" quoted in the Los Angeles Times said, the administration is suffering "buyer's remorse for this war...They never really thought about what was required, and now they have sticker shock."
Admittedly, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 51% of Americans are against sending in more troops. (Who knows how they would react to a president who went on TV to announce that he had genuinely reconsidered?) Official Washington is another matter. For General Petraeus, who claims to have no political ambitions but is periodically mentioned as the Eisenhower of 2012, how potentially peachy to launch your campaign against the president who lost you the war.
A Petraeus Moment?
In the present context, the media language being used to describe this military-civilian conflict of wills -- frustration, impatience, split, rupture, ire -- may fall short of capturing the import of a moment which has been brewing, institutionally speaking, for a long time. There have been increasing numbers of generals' "revolts of various sorts in our recent past. Of course, George W. Bush was insistent on turning planning over to his generals (though only when he liked them), something Barack Obama criticized him for during the election campaign. ("The job of the commander in chief is to listen to the best counsel available and to listen even to people you don't agree with and then ultimately you make the final decision and you take responsibility for those actions.")
Now, it looks as if we are about to have a civilian-military encounter of the first order in which Obama will indeed need to take responsibility for difficult actions (or the lack thereof). If a genuine clash heats up, expect more discussion of "MacArthur moments," but this will not be Truman versus MacArthur redux, and not just because Petraeus seems to be a subtler political player than MacArthur ever was.
Over the nearly six decades that separate us from Truman's great moment, the Pentagon has become a far more overwhelming institution. In Afghanistan, as in Washington, it has swallowed up much of what once was intelligence, as it is swallowing up much of what once was diplomacy. It is linked to one of the two businesses, the Pentagon-subsidized weapons industry, which has proven an American success story even in the worst of economic times (the other remains Hollywood). It now holds a far different position in a society that seems to feed on war.
It's one thing for the leaders of a country to say that war should be left to the generals when suddenly embroiled in conflict, quite another when that country is eternally in a state of war. In such a case, if you turn crucial war decisions over to the military, you functionally turn foreign policy over to them as well. All of this is made more complicated, because the cast of "civilians" theoretically pitted against the military right now includes Karl W. Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who is the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan, Douglas Lute, a lieutenant general who is the president's special advisor on Afghanistan and Pakistan (dubbed the "war czar" when he held the same position in the Bush administration), and James Jones, a retired Marine Corps general, who is national security advisor, not to speak of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
The question is: will an already heavily militarized foreign policy geared to endless global war be surrendered to the generals? Depending on what Obama does, the answer to that question may not be fully, or even largely, clarified this time around. He may quietly give way, or they may, or compromises may be reached behind the scenes. After all, careers and political futures are at stake.
But consider us warned. This is a question that is not likely to go away and that may determine what this country becomes. We know what a MacArthur moment was; we may find out soon enough what a Petraeus moment is.
The author never quite gets around to saying so, but it appears his preferred strategy is the "low-profile" kill-the-terrorists one. In all likelihood that is only posturing to cover his real preference, running away.
There are many historical examples of successful counter-insurgency, which is based on protecting the population. Most recently with the surge in Iraq, which is not to say how long this victory will stand.
AFAIK, there is not a single example of a successful implementation of the low-profile hunt down and kill the terrorists approach. If anybody's got one, I'd love to hear about it.
The major reason is that successful targetted attacks depend entirely on accurate intelligence. Unless the population feels somewhat safe from terrorist reprisal, this intelligence will not be forthcoming.
In an insurgency or counter-insurgency, the battlefield is the population, not the geography. Hunter-killer commando attacks do not win over the population. It is attacking on the wrong battlefield.
I'm not trying to say that counter-insurgency is always effective, or that it will work in Afghanistan.
I'm saying that from all evidence I have seen it's the only strategy with some chance of success.
Posturing, blovating and whining. Long on retoric, short on any fundemental grasp of ground truth. No surprise See-BS would pick this know nothing politically correct blowhard over someone who actually understands Counter Insurgency.
Really? And those are? Cause other then Iraq and Malaysia, I cannot think of any.
The lefties are loosening the knives. Bush and his chosen Generals: McChrystal and Petraeus are the target. Seems they have forgotten the lessons of the Marshall Plan, which was the greatest experiment in nation building we ever embarked upon, and remarkably is lauded by the lefties as a great success. The jihadists, with millions of potential recruits and billions of dollars and who strive to destroy us, are as great a threat to our liberty as were the communists, but the lefties refuse to acknowledge threats. Who will be the next Mr. X? I suspect that Petraeus and McChrystal are attempting to fill that role. While I agree that McChrystal and Petraeus have boxed Obama in a corner, Obama and the lefties need to be boxed in or they will flush liberty down the drain. Obama and his naive followers are not on the same intellectual plane as McChrystal and Petraeus. Our current military leadership understands the threat and consequence of losing this long and cruel war. Obama and his cronies don’t get it, evidenced by Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Honduras, Georgia, Poland, the Czech Republic, etc. I pray the Republic will survive Obama.
Amazing how the same set of Leftist extremists, like this author, find it impossible to peacefully co-exist with the "Christan Right" in this country think they can sit down and chat with the Taliban and Al Qeda and "work things out".
Hard to understand how cluelessness like this author's is evolutionary survivable.
The only victory 0bama is interested in, happened last November. He won’t keep the US in Afghanistan, even if by doing so he could significantly thin the herd of brave and patriotic Americans.
In the unlikely event he did stick it out, we’d lose by slow degrees due to incompetence at the top — the Commander in Chief.
But those are our choices while 0bama is POTUS: lose slow or retreat.
It was when Truman instituted a no win war policy that has been repeated by Democrats ever since.
In fact, most insurgencies fail. Just about every Latin American country has had various periods of Marxist insurgencies. With the exception of Cuba and (temporarily) Nicaragua, all failed.
You can make a damn good case, in fact, that insurgencies almost always fail. Even the South Vietnamese insurgents collapsed after the Tet Offensive, with the North eventually conquering the South, after we shamefully abandoned them, via a fully conventional invasion.
The collapse of colonialism after WWII does not invalidate this thesis, as this was more a result of failure of will on the part of the colonializers than of successful insurgency.
Let me turn the question around. What do you consider successful insurgencies?
MNJohnnie wrote: “Posturing, bloviating and whining.”
..... My reaction as well. Lengthy, though: Englehart must charge by the word for his character assassination work.
Why not take the easy way out......RACIST!!!
Then it's not victory.
Invade both Pakistan and Iran? Excellent idea.
We had so little trouble dealing with Iraq, 30M population in flat desert country well suited to conventional military action that we might as well take on two countries with a combined population of 240M and some of the most difficult terrain on earth.
All victories last forever?
The Marshall Plan revived several nations populated by highly-civilized Europeans, not a collection of ninth-century barbarians.
As well as Eisenhower, Nixon, and both Bushes, all Republicans.
The "let's fight just enough to show we're serious" concept is popular with politicians of both parties, and has led to defeat after defeat in a truly heartwarming display of bipartisanship.
This is so entrenched among our political class that it was clear to me on 9/13/01 that the "war" would be a sham, which, I am very sorry to say, was entirely correct.
Read this article from the Indian Defence Review analyzing the victory over the Tamil Liberation Tigers on Ceylon if you want to know what victory means, and what it requires.
George W. Bush had no clue, and there are no existing male Republican politicians with any electoral prospects who do, either.
Well, forever is a long time, but the white, Greek-speaking tribes of Kafiristan didn't fall to Islam until 1895, about 2200 years after Alexander's conquest.
2200 years seems reasonable to me as a standard.
True about Kafiristan, now Nuristan, but they didn’t (and don’t) speak Greek. Their languages form a very distinct Indo-European group, as they have been quite isolated from others for 3000 to 4000 years.
It will, but just like the aftermath of Jimmy Carter, there will be so many problems for a Republican to sort out and so many unintended consequences that no one could fix the mess he's left. Which of course then leaves an opening for a demagogic Democrat when the Republican is done. These b@$t@rds never lose, no matter how badly they mess things up.
True. The culture necessary for modern society was there, albeit greatly battered by war and Nazi occupation.
Only the “stuff” had been destroyed.
In Iraq and (especially) Afghanistan neither the culture nor the stuff is there. It’s much more difficult to build a culture than to install stuff. We don’t really have a clue how to change cultures.
Not to mention most Afghans are quite attached to their present culture and want to keep it, regardless of how primitive and undesirable it appears to us.
Right. We actually did have little trouble dealing with Iraq:
The trouble you are afraid of came from Iran in regards to Iraq and Pakistan in regards to Afghanistan.
So we take those two out and where is the trouble you are afraid of supposed to come from then??
The Taliban yearn for the time of Mohommad which is the 6th century. Kabul was and is a very modern city. I would say that some 95 percent of Afghans reject Wahhabism, the Taliban and Al Qaida. Go for the big picture Jim— nation building as a means to deny Al Qaida a safe haven. BTW, I would not put the National Socialist in the same catagory as Geothe and Shiller, but all were Germans, and it worked.
Mao said it. The people are the sea the guerrilla fish swim in. The US won in Iraq by turning the population against the Insurgency, they are losing the people in Afghanistan because they cannot protect the people from the Insurgency.
Counter Insurgency is completely different then total war. Trying to wage the 1st by the tactics of the latter has failed every single time it it has been tied.
After all the previous snarkiness in the article, after the McArthur fixation, after the slams at Petraeus, this sentence did me in.
One, you have the quotes around 'protect the population'. Why? What does that mean? Does the author think it's a lie or just foolish? Does the author not realize that in an insurgency, the population represents an unlimited number of insurgents.
Sure, you could defeat the insurgency by killing all of the population. No population = no insurgents. I don't think that's what the author had in mind.
The population doesn't like the Taliban, but won't fight them, it they will be defeated. With a plan to protect the population, they can then turn on the Taliban, rat them out, allow the American and Afghan armies to kill Taliban.
The author doesn't get this? I've wasted three minutes of my life reading half of this article. Don't waste yours.
This is akin to some conservatives fantasies that we should have allied ourselves with the defeated Germans and attacked the USSR in 1945.
From a purely geopolitical strategy POV, this might have made sense.
But those who propose such wide-ranging military action are forgetting one thing. America is a democratic republic and no war, certainly no large war such as you are proposing, can be waged without well over 50% public support.
I suspect at present support for invasion of Iran and Pakistan would be well under 10%.
We also do not presently have the forces to launch such an attack. Iran, possibly. Iran and Pakistan, no way.
We can still destroy these nations, obviously, but we cannot invade and occupy them without spending several years building up our military, which would almost certainly require conscription.
You may have also noted the overwhelming public demand to bring back the draft.
Invasion and occupation of Iran and Pakistan would be at least an order of magnitude more difficult than of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Tom Engelhardt
Stan McChrystal. From the military's dark side world of special ops and targeted assassinations
Tom Engelhardt is a gutter dwelling pig.
He needs to be b*tch-slapped by a Girl Scout.
or it was when MacA wanted to cover the demarkation zone between the Koreas with Cobalt 64 and Truman fired him over that idea.
You call the state of affairs in Iraq victory?
Wow! You must be a Bush fan!
You forgot the nuking of Mecca!
Philippine–American War for US. Tamil Tiger was heavily wounded in Sri Lanka.
First of all, it's only losing if the so-called President bugs out of it, as appears to be his want.
Second, and more importantly, he wanted this frickin' job!! So he can frickin' well live with the "loss"!
I must have added the Spanish Civil War against the Communist Terrorists from all over the world. It’s fun to see all these dirty communist to taste defeat.
bump
General Stanley "Stan" McChrystal....whose "classified, pre-decisional" and devastating report -- was conveniently, not to say suspiciously, leaked to Bob Woodward of the Washington Post by we-know-not-who at a particularly embarrassing moment for Barack Obama...
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