McChrystal's Report
| Sun Sep. 20, 2009 10:02 PM PDT
The Washington Post has obtained a copy of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's report on the war in Afghanistan:
The assessment offers an unsparing critique of the failings of the Afghan government, contending that official corruption is as much of a threat as the insurgency to the mission of the International Security Assistance Force, or ISAF, as the U.S.-led NATO coalition is widely known.
"The weakness of state institutions, malign actions of power-brokers, widespread corruption and abuse of power by various officials, and ISAF's own errors, have given Afghans little reason to support their government," McChrystal says.
The result has been a "crisis of confidence among Afghans," he writes. "Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents."
McChrystal is equally critical of the command he has led since June 15. The key weakness of ISAF, he says, is that it is not aggressively defending the Afghan population. "Pre-occupied with protection of our own forces, we have operated in a manner that distances us — physically and psychologically — from the people we seek to protect. . . . The insurgents cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves."
A separate report outlines McChrystal's request for more troops, without which the war "will likely result in failure," he says. But I gotta ask: considering the unrelentingly grim assessment in the rest of his report, is it really likely that a few more troops and a change in emphasis toward COIN and away from counterterrorism will bear results within 12 months? Because that's what McChrystal says the timeframe is.
That hardly seems likely to me. But then, the surge in Iraq seemed an unlikely strategy to me too, and yet it worked1. So my track record in surge-ology isn't great. Still, it's worth bearing a couple of things in mind. First, the Iraqi surge succeeded only because it was accompanied by several other developments (primarily the Sunni awakening, two previous years of sectarian cleansing, and al-Sadr's ceasefire), none of which can or will be duplicated in Afghanistan. Second, the Iraqi surge was fundamentally targeted at Baghdad. Spreading 28,000 troops throughout a country where we already had 140,000 in place would almost certainly have had no effect. But most of the troops were deployed in Baghdad, where it meant a near doubling of capacity, and that did have an effect. Baghdad was so central to the rest of Iraq that a reduction of violence there had a country-wide effect.
But no such concentration is possible in Afghanistan. Kabul isn't as important to Afghanistan as Baghdad is to Iraq, and in any case Kabul is already relatively safe. It's the rest of the country that needs more troops, and it's hard to think of any single place they could be concentrated enough to have a real impact.
I think that's the key thing to look for when McChrystal gets more specific: what, exactly, does he propose to do with the additional troops? If the idea is to spread them out in some way (for troop training, insurgent fighting, population protection, etc.), his request should probably be viewed skeptically. But if he can propose some key operation or area where additional troops would represent a doubling or tripling of capacity and success might have an outsize effect on the entire conflict, then it might be worth trying. We'll see.
1I know, I know: "worked" is a question begging term. But the surge did reduce violence, increase security, and make political reconciliation at least a possibility. Long term stability is still up in the air, but even the short-term success of the surge was more than I thought likely at the time.
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Comments
I was willing to leave Iraq, because an unstable Iraq only makes gas more expensive.
An unstable Afghanistan is beyond the reach of any neighbors to mitigate or target aggressions. Their mountains are like oceans... Isolating them from their neighbors, much like the oceans do for the US. If we allow our 'real' enemy's friends the Taliban regain power through force of arms, we're just going to empower those who say that 9/11 was appropriate. Maybe if we can convince enough of them that force of ballots and local politics will bring them what they want better than blood and bullets.
Also, I'm willing to give it more time, as we get, you know, some sort of realistic control over our actors in the area. Have to undo the damage Bush did before we can let go.
I'd really like to see
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Sun Sep. 20, 2009 11:24 PM PDT.
I'd really like to see Petraeus and McChrystal called before Congress to discuss this report, and to discuss similarities and differences with Iraq as well as make the case as to why we should care. I'd say Afghanistan is important because Pakistan is important, but if so, what are our plans in Pakistan besides drone attacks.
I'd also like to see more of economic plan for Afghanistan -- subvert them and co-opt them with jobs leading to full bellies.
goals
Submitted by supersaurus (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 2:04 AM PDT.
what are our goals in afghanistan? it is McChrystal's job to carry out policy, not to make it. if we don't have goals there I don't see how he can possibly be expected to "succeed" since without goals there is no way to tell when you are done. and please...don't give me a list of 50 "metrics" to measure "progress", I want to know five specific things we want to achieve. if you don't have specific goals it is difficult even to argue about being there.
McChrystal's Report
Submitted by Lightflyer (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 2:25 AM PDT.
None of the recommendations so far from anybody make sense. We are on a loser in Afghanistan. The question we should be asking our commanders is not "How can we win in Afghanistan?", it is "How can we get out of Afghanistan at a cost that makes sense?".
May I commend to you: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/sep/17/on-brink-failure-in-...
corruption
Submitted by steve duncan on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 3:46 AM PDT.
Afghan government corruption accusations figure prominently in the report? Hmmm, I suppose it's a given corruption was rampant before the United States invading and occupying forces arrived. I'd also posit U.S. military and U.S. affiliated contractors took it to an entirely new level. Switzerland and the Cayman Islands greatly appreciate all our efforts.
Afghanistan
Submitted by rbe1 (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 3:58 AM PDT.
So how is another surge going to reduce corruption ? In fact how is a surge going to transform societal mores/institutions in place for over a thousand years ?
The surge worked because it
Submitted by MNPundit (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 4:38 AM PDT.
The surge worked because it created political cover for us to escape. I'm fine with that, but lots of other things were done along with the surge to create that cover as well. It was only on part of a much broader scheme.
Petraeus made a major change
Submitted by skeptonomist (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 5:25 AM PDT.
Petraeus made a major change in policy, switching to buying off the Sunni insurgents - the increase in troop numbers was window dressing to disguise the nature of the real policy. Petraeus (or someone) deserves credit for this, but does McChrystal really understand what went on? Warlords hostile to the Afghanistan government might be bought off, but this would not work with the Taliban.
Would someone get rid of the
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 8:14 AM PDT.
Would someone get rid of the fake norbizness. The real norbizness always had something interesting or funny to say.
Anyone read The Best and the
Submitted by Fred (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 6:41 AM PDT.
Anyone read The Best and the Brightest recently?
But the surge did reduce
Submitted by Luther on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 7:49 AM PDT.
But the surge did reduce violence, increase security, and make political reconciliation at least a possibility.
Reduced Iraqi on Iraqi violence, but increased, at least temporarily, Iraqi on US troops violence by emphasizing population safety over troop safety. But who cares about throwaway volunteer troops!
Culture determines government, so the corrupt cultures of Iraq and Afghanistan will eventually produce one party rule as the party in power strives to consolidate its lucrative money-making position. Or Afghanistan could revert to tribalism, or Taliban rule; but democracy is not an option for a basically corrupt culture.
The "Surge" Misidentified
Submitted by MrToad (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 7:50 AM PDT.
As we all remember (or should), the "surge" was presented and promoted as an necessary and temporary increase in troop levels. This increase did take place, and the additional troops did increase security over the short term by ringing the Bagdad perimeter and cutting off the supply of weapons coming into the area. However, this effort was greatly overshadowed by the almost totally unpublicized pre-emption of insurgent Sunni forces by which we bought off the very guys who had been killing our troops but paying them a generous monthly stipend to kill other insurgents instead. In other words, we were able to pay them more than the war lords, so they changed sides, albeit temporarily. We heard barely a peep about this when it was happening, and, later, when it did summon a modicum of media attention, it was more or less insinuated into news reports, almost as an aside. This probably rates as the greatest propaganda victory of this whole sorry war, and it's a shame that the media averted their eyes and allowed themselves to be rolled.
Sounds like money well spent
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 8:16 AM PDT.
Sounds like money well spent and far more efficient than giving the money to Halliburton.
Surge and reconciliation
Submitted by Bruce Webb (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 9:57 AM PDT.
Plus even supporters of the surge admit that putting essentially the entire body of the insurgency on the U.S. payroll had a lot to do with success.
The key failure in 2003 and 2004 was the decision to classify the both the Sunnis and the more fundamentalists of the Shi'ia as enemies to be suppressed in favor of a fanciful secular Shi'ia state that existed only in Chalabi's imagination but transmitted into the Neo-Con world view. The Battles of Fallujah and Ramadi on the one hand and Karbala and Najaf didn't have to happen. We could have cut the same deals after the Fall of Baghdad as we finally did after the surge.
In my view our comparatively higher level of success in Iraq in 2007 and after had a lot more to do with the resignation of that madman Rumsfeld in Nov 2006 than the actual military move. I mean every decision he made made things worse.
The point of the excersize
Submitted by BigSky (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 9:34 AM PDT.
Is what again? We never had a durable, clearly articulated mission in Iraq but that was "OK" because... well I forget.
Now we have mission creep in Afghanistan (poppy interdiction fer christ sake) and no clearly articulated mission.
Makes me wonder if the mission isn't just to use equipment and munitions so we can replace them and keep the machine rolling. There is nothing that a tank can do about the Taliban but we will keep going down that road. It would seem that we could get the Afghanis to roust the Taliban themselves if we had built better roads, schools , irrigation systems for agriculture, maybe some health care networks. That might've worked to turn their society against the knuckledraggers... instead, we've done what exactly?
Why we fight
Submitted by MarkH on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 9:55 AM PDT.
I think the military in Afghanistan has had a difficult time since there have been a variety of requirements placed on them and the situation has been changing.
First there was the Bush years when we were there, fought the Taliban at Bora Bora and then Bush left for Iraq, but expected the military to stay in Afghanistan and do stuff. What, we don't know.
The Obama year begins with a presence, protecting Kabul primarily, protecting civilians and establishing ourselves for a longer presence in which we could build up the civilian government and it's military. Our activities of note during this time were in Pakistan with drone attacks and assisting Pres. Zardari fight the Taliban, so we could go after Al Qaeda.
Now, we're continuing that, but with the Taliban wanting to come back into Afghanistan we have to take a harder line and not just protect civilians. Our big push into Taliban territory has taught us a couple of important tactical lessons. One, don't go with small forces they can outnumber and two, don't get ambushed with IEDs, landmines (sold to them by us) or anything else. We had to drop back and keep our troops safe so we had time to rejigger the tactics. First in that was to get more intelligence people in the field who could help us know where the enemy is and in what numbers and with what force.
That brings us to the present day.
It will take a little time to know how well the added field intelligence is going to work. McChrystal should take a sedative and work with these guys. When we go back to a full on fight it should be with superior force and possibly superior numbers where we can win instead of being ripped up with landmines.
There is no glory in stupidly rushing onto a bayonet or landmine instead of winning with a larger force of soldiers or tanks or aircraft strafe & bombs or drone bombs which can obliterate the enemy. Just gotta find them first.
Fish rots from the head down
Submitted by Bruce Webb (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 10:26 AM PDT.
We are making the same fundamental mistake we did in Vietnam and did in Indonesia, the Philippines and the Congo before that. You can't build stable democracies on a foundation of corruption. Instead you end with up billionaire dictators exploiting their people in astonishing ways.
This Time article from April 1968 will sound pretty familiar to anyone reading the papers today. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,838215-5,00.html
General Westmoreland had been replaced by the much more able General Abrams who among other things made demands the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Viet-Nam) clean up its notorious pervasive corruption among the officer corps while Abrams proceeded to properly equip the line soldiers and get them out of essentially defensive positions. From the article
Long before the decision to move ARVN toward taking over the brunt of the fighting, Abrams fought to rearm the South Vietnamese with the best U.S. weaponry, and the first ARVN units received M-16 rifles late last year. Now the supply will be speeded up—and broadened. Defense Secretary Clifford announced last week a dramatic increase in the U.S. production of the M-16 so as to equip all ARVN units by midsummer. The South Vietnamese will also be issued a new type of improved mortar, more armored personnel carriers, better communications equipment. They will also get more helicopter support to increase their firepower and mobility.
All good stuff, in theory, but the corruption never went away and so 'Vietnamization' ultimately failed.
Creighton Abrams was a suburb soldier and I don't doubt that McChrystal is to. But you can't do good work with broken tools and there is no tool more broken than Karzai and his regime. And listening to the Army is not necesssarily a prudent move either. From the same article.
Similarly, Lyndon Johnson's decision not to run for President is widely read as an admission of failure in Viet Nam, or at the very least heralding a new Commander in Chief likely to be less hawkish. Understandably, the men under fire resent any restriction laid on their commanders and the use of their firepower, feeling that such restrictions are sure to prolong the war. All along they have resented, for example, granting the enemy sanctuary in Laos and Cambodia and not fully closing the harbor of Haiphong. Most will admit that there are political considerations involved that are beyond their ken to evaluate. But, as soldiers, they feel that the disadvantages of limited war make their task more difficult and dangerous. If there is not an all-out peace, most of them would prefer a President who would escalate the war.
Again this sounds awfully familiar, you send the Army to war they want to bring back victory. Which is why we have civilian control to start with. Otherwise you get militarists like MarkH who believe the path to victory always comes through more and better firepower calling the shots.
not basically corrupt, but tribal
Submitted by cld (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 11:37 AM PDT.
Afghani culture isn't 'basically corrupt' it's rather that it's basically tribal.
When a fundamental organization of society is no longer current it is inevitably corrupt compared to the latest form. The way tribal societies or feudal societies or monarchies or autocracies work now is the way they've always worked, but in the modern world those ways are illegal.
This is really the basis for the social conservative resentment of the modern world everywhere, from Republicans to religious fundamentalists to Afghanis and the Pashtun.
we could just walk out of Afghanistan easier
Submitted by cld (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 12:31 PM PDT.
I think we could just walk out of Afghanistan easier than we could have just walked out of Vietnam because we still have a high level of engagement with Iran and Pakistan and India and working to stabilize those countries will have an effect of stabilization bleeding into Afghanistan.
As it is now Afghanistan is a hill too far, we need to concentrate on the nearer hills.
I don't think anyone in Washington has fully come to terms with the fact of the election. The outright fraud is apparent to every last soul in the country, and they're coming to view us not only as occupiers, but as co-conspirators in the hijacking of their presidency. The scale of the graft & corruption at every level renders a centralized government completely useless -- and therefore pointless. Our continued presence there means our continued funneling of money to embezzlers, drug traffickers, mafioso, & warlords. And to what end? We could kill every last Taliban member in the region, and it wouldn't change the fact that the country is run by thugs. As Josh Foust puts it, it's getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between the ISAF mission and Taliban propaganda of the ISAF mission.
Surge in Iraq
Submitted by Kathy Kattenburg (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 5:00 PM PDT.
The surge in Iraq did not reduce violence -- at least not in the way that the right likes to say it did. By the time the surge was instituted, most of worst atrocities of violence had ended because there were so few people left to kill or displace. I think it's really a stretch to claim that after five years of horrendous bloodshed, ethnic cleansing, death squads, and the like, that when the violence finally started diminishing, it was the surge that did it.
That comment about the fake
Submitted by Noumenon (not verified) on Mon Sep. 21, 2009 6:19 PM PDT.
That comment about the fake norbizness reminded me of all the people who used to pose as that one conservative in the comments at washingtonmonthly.com. And that made me realize just how much better Kevin's comments are since coming to Mother Jones. Just look at this thread! No use of the word "Rethuglican," a lot of posts and links worth reading, and some genuine differences of opinion being hashed out among reasonable people.
Well, if you like that kind
Submitted by cld (not verified) on Tue Sep. 22, 2009 12:39 PM PDT.
Well, if you like that kind of thing.
who leaked the report and what was the purpose?
Submitted by Johnqeniac (not verified) on Mon Sep. 28, 2009 6:52 AM PDT.
First of all, why was a repellant little beltway toady like woodward given a copy of the report, while the American People aren't allowed to see it? There is a good possibility that, just as the case during the bush admin, this was a strategic leak by either the pentagon or the obama admin, either to control American public opinion or to control obama or the congress.
Second, even your footnoted disclaimer to your statement that 'it' (a surge of troops) 'worked' in Iraq fails to acknowledge how dubious the surge actually was. One cannot overestimate the part that putting your enemy (the sunni warlords and their men, many former members of the old military) directly on the payroll. Similarly, the fact that large parts of Baghdad had already been cleansed of sunnis (2-4 million refugees in syria, jordan, and esewhere). There are other factors, but these two alone quite arguably account for whatever statistics the 'surge' in iraq is given credit for. Essentially, petraeus cut a deal with the leaders of the insurgency, put them on the payroll, gave them guns, essentially rectifying the dissolution of the bathist army. So, it is far more appropriate to say that what 'worked' in Iraq was to broker a peace agreement with the people we were fighting, involving giving them power, authority, salaries, and guns, rather than fighting them with a surge of troops. THAT in fact might be a useful model for Afghanistan - renaming the Taliban to be the 'Sons of Afghanistan' and putting them on the payroll of the United States government. If so, can we please not wait N more years to do it, while we pretend that we are fighting a war and not losing an occupation?
uh did you say kabul is
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 1:07 PM PDT.
uh did you say kabul is realtively safe? i beg to differ. how bout the attack on the un workers by the taliban, afullfillment of the taliban to disrupt this coming weeks election. not safe. especially when ill be there! i want more troops. id like to live thanks.
uh did you say kabul is
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Oct. 28, 2009 1:07 PM PDT.
uh did you say kabul is realtively safe? i beg to differ. how bout the attack on the un workers by the taliban, afullfillment of the taliban to disrupt this coming weeks election. not safe. especially when ill be there! i want more troops. id like to live thanks.
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