That Rolling Stone article on McChrystal
Issandr El AmraniI'm no Afghanistan or military policy expert, but since everyone is talking about it, I thought I'd put out my own non-specialist two cents on the McChrystal Affair. That's the point of a blog, after all.
Quite aside from its immediate political consequences and the fact that McChrystal might lose his job over it, the article and its fallout raises several interesting questions. Michael Hastings, the journalist who wrote it, is definitely an anti-COIN person. But he does raise valid points about the Achilles' heel of McChrystal and other advocates of COIN strategy in Afghanistan: they lack confidence in the potential for success of their strategy, always adding caveats and saying it's going to be a long and tough affair, but rarely think this alone is ground for rethinking the usefulness of COIN. I would echo, and mirror, the points made by my friend Andrew Exum, a very thoughtful and reasonable COINdinista:
As much as critics of counterinsurgency like to blame Gen. McChrystal (and nefarious think-tankers, of course) for the current strategy, the reality is that the civilian decision-makers in the Obama Administration conducted two high-level reviews in 2009 and twice arrived at a national strategy focused on conducting counterinsurgency operations in Afghanistan. I suspect the president will not replace the man he has put in charge of executing that strategy with just 12 months to go before we begin a withdrawal. On the other hand, there are those who will argue that the principle of civilian control over the military is more important than whatever national interests we have in Afghanistan. And that is a legitimate argument to make. We just need to be honest about the risks both courses of action carry with them.
Obama decided to take up that policy, which some in the military and think-tanks aggressively fought for. At this point, the pro- or anti-COIN debate has taken such importance that there are high political stakes, not just for Obama but also for COIN advocates who see themselves as some kind of vanguard — which is exactly the way McChrystal's gang appears in the article.
And we should not forget another point Exum makes here:
In a weird way, Hastings is making the argument to readers of Rolling Stone (Rolling Stone!) that counterinsurgency sucks because it doesn't allow our soldiers to kill enough people. What, pray tell, is Hastings' alternative to counterinsurgency? Disengagement from Afghanistan? Okay, but what would the costs and benefits of that disengagement be? I am frustrated by the reluctance of the legions of counterinsurgency skeptics to be honest about -- or even discuss -- the costs and benefits of alternatives. Some do, but not many.
I'm not qualified to even start thinking about suggesting alternative military policies, but like any American I can express a simple distaste for prolonging a military adventure indefinitely and not particularly care for expending treasure and blood for the future of Afghanistan. Let Afghanistan's neighbors take care of it, and just ensure the country does not become a base of operations for transnational terrorists again. I'm not even sure to what extent Afghanistan was crucial to 9/11 anyway, aside as a place where Osama Bin Laden could spend his time in relative safety. Surely the Hamburg cell was more important.
One last thing: to me, the most striking thing is that the offensive comments made by McChrystal and his teams speak not necessarily of insubordination, but a besieged groupthink mentality centered around protecting a charismatic leader — McChrystal himself. I don't particularly care about the loudmouthed camaraderie around McChrystal, and in fact I find much of it rather funny. But one gets a rather worrying sense that these guys are not just doing their job, but have a grander sense of mission and a point to prove. And that makes me feel uneasy.
Reader Comments (10)
"Let Afghanistan's neighbors take care of it, and just ensure the country does not become a base of operations for transnational terrorists again."
Which of Afghanistan's neighbours? Pakistan and the ISI? Turkmenistan? Iran? And how should the US ensure that Afghanistan does not become a base for transnational terrorists, without the sacrifice of blood and treasure?
I don't have a horse in the COIN debate, but I don't think Obama should accept McChrystal's resignation, not at this stage of the campaign. The most irreverent of what appears in the Rolling Stone article is from McChrystal's aides, anyway. Fine. Court-martial them.
And I'm a bit surprised to see all the soldiers commenting on Ex's post making pious noises about the importance of maintaining the principle of civilian control of the military. When have soldiers not been contemptuous of the civilian leadership? Why, indeed, should they not be, when the military-industrial complex leads the civilian government by the nose, leaving civilians to pay through the nose?
Best-case scenario, as far as I can see: McChrystal grovels and kowtows before Obama. Obama acts tough and steely, then pardons him and sends him back to do his Very Important Work.
Yes, Pakistan, China, Russia, India and the others who have a direct stake. The US can act against transnational terrorists as it already does, through drone strikes, at the cost of much, much less blood and treasure.
I am torn on whether McChrystal should resign or be fired — you make good points but he's he has broken the military's own rules and generals have been dismissed for less in the past, including by Defense Sec Gates. But he should not be indispensable.
While I am no fan of McChrystal, I am equally no fan of the administration's faith in Rumsfeldian (on the cheap) warfare combined with an almost religious belief that it is doing serious "nation building." Yes, McChrystal just wants to slaughter more of the enemy and not have to return Blackberry messages to administration boobahs. But look what kind of muddled strategy he's being asked to implement (if anyone could indeed figure it out):
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2010/04/27/world/27powerpoint_CA0_337-span/27powerpoint_CA0-articleLarge.jpg
Ultimately sanity will once again prevail and we will get the hell out of Afghanistan, just as we had to get out of Korea, Viet Nam, and [hopefully soon] Iraq. Then we can plan for our next adventure in slaughter, invasion, and occupation -- accompanied by the usual lack of historical reflection, in which we ask the perennial dumb cow question: "Why do they hate us so?"
$@#%## !!!!!
@TimSeah:
"McChrystal grovels and kowtows before Obama. Obama acts tough and steely, then pardons him and sends him back to do his Very Important Work."
Gahahah - so true. The rituals of penitence in political theatre!
More seriously, WTF were McChrystal's press people thinking? Do they not know journalists? I thought the US military had come to be very media savvy. Did they not realize what a sh*tstorm this would create? Or was it a classic case of the journo getting chummy with the aides who then let down their guards?
I have to say as a journo I'm torn about all this: I like it that McChrystal gave this access. This kind of transparency is important. One of the fallouts of this affair may be that journalists will no longer have that kind of access, or at least only the "safe" ones like Bob Woodward.
Sure, but as a military professional he should have known better. Oh well - got him fired.
Ah it was a brilliant piece of journalism, and the proof is that it got the general running the afghan war fired. I'll bet a lot of those quotes came from the drunken night in Paris. Yeah, sucks about the lost access for journalists going forward, but they weren't going to produce half as good or effective embed stories anyway, realistically.
Pakistan is not the answer. It's the problem. And handing the trillion dollars in mineral reserves to Russia - assuming they could take them - after the us paid for getting Russia out with 9/11 and now the current bleeding war doesn't seem to be in the us' interest (or the afghans', who probably still bear a grudge against Russia.) China's an intriguing possibility, though they may calculate the costs of getting Afghanistan's buried treasure out of the ground and across the wan-tien mountains and the gobi desert outweigh the profits in the short to medium term.
And drones alone cannot be the answer. They kill a lot of civilians and create more enemies.
It'd be nice if something like the Sahwa program could be duplicated in Afghanistan without bringing back the warlords more than the us already has. I just don't know if it's possible.
*sorry, the tian-shan mountains. tien-wan was what the leader of the red turban rebellion called his ill-fated 14th C "dynasty"
No, Exum's point about alternatives has no legitimacy at all. It comes down to saying "now that I've wrecked everything, how do you propose to fix it?" The first step in fixing it is to stop making the mistakes, in this case, to start to de-escalate, at least.
We can manage transnational terrorism as we do now in a limited way, as you write Issandr.
There is something to be said for leaving Afghanistan and its resources to the Russians and Chinese to fight over. Making sure they do bicker and fiddle at one another there would require sustained low level involvement with local warlords/tribal leaders to instigate disagreements and see to it that they keep bumping into one another. There is a good case for Russia and China to be "natural" rivals in Eurasia. Bottom line is, keeping sustained conflict there while other powers try to project influence over the Afghans is in our interest. We do not want Iran or China or Russia or India to stabilize Afghanistan. It needs to be a volatile frontier they're afraid to get too deeply involved in. Let it be disputed space. Left to the Russians and Chinese it will end up like Congo more than anything else. Right next to the big "rising" powers with social problems and desires to demonstrate their power. It could put the big four or five (China/Russia/Iran/Pakistan or India) in awkward and dangerous positions. That of course, I think, assumes the worst of the lot of them, but I'm not ever really optimistic anyhow.