So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.-The last sentences of this article, (and the narrative that Rolling Stone wants the reader to accept)
*****
This is an interesting article in many ways. To me, I look at it from several points of view that might provide an explanation for such a thing. I look at the article as a big commentary on the poker game called Afghanistan, with a table of politicians, a president and his administration, civilian leaders, the enemy, Karzai, the media, and General McChrystal. Each player has their own strategy in this game, and each player has a plan to win. The stakes are political survival, the direction of the war, and the narrative in the history books and everyone is fighting for public support and opinion. So what is each player’s strategy and goals in this game?
Well, let’s break it down. The first up is Rolling Stone. For them the pot in this poker game is a sensational story and a further narrative of the war as being lost. That COIN sucks and General McChrystal is a ‘Runaway General’, or uncontrollable. Any way they can show a division between all the crucial leadership running the war, is good for their goal of ending the war. Rolling Stone is also a supporter of the Obama administration, but they also do not support the war in Afghanistan. So to them, showing a failed war and putting all the blame on an out of control general helps to insulate their guy in office. To show support for the administration, while at the same time protesting the war by making it the product of that insane guy in charge called General McChrystal.
The next player to discuss is the President and all of his men. They need a win in Afghanistan, but they have also painted themselves into a corner with the July 2011 date for withdrawal. They did this to appease their political base, and this date and the coming election is going to effect all of their decision making on the wartime strategy there. There is also historical context, and Obama does not want this to be his Vietnam. No standing President wants that, and every President looks at a war under their watch as how it will look in the history books. So the coming election and history are the two factors pressing this administration. Not to mention that he also has the economy and the BP spill in the Gulf as two negatives. He needs a win in one or two of these areas, because coming into re-election with all of those ‘losers’ will definitely hurt him.
Then there is the civilian leadership like Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador. Of course there would be friction between him and McChrystal, and especially after McChrystal was his subordinate at one point, and especially after he was not chosen as the viceroy in Afghanistan. Plus DoD gets way more money than DoS when it comes to budget and resources, and you have that clash. But there is one part of this story that clued me into the history narrative of this war. When Eikenberry leaked the cable to the New York Times about how pathetic Karzai and the war strategy was, this was a way to seal their place in history books as a ‘I told you so’. McChrystal and gang referred to it as Eikenberry ‘covering his flank for the history books’. Anyone see the pattern here?
The politicians mentioned in the article all have the same goal as the President, and that is political survival. To understand the mind of a politician, all you have to do is think in terms of votes and re-election. Whatever it takes to stay in office and rally their base. So the anti-war politicians whose base is anti-war, only benefit if the war strategy fails. The pro-war politicians whose base is pro-war, only benefit if the war strategy works. That is the two sides of this political battle, and each side will latch on to anything that will give them an advantage with rallying their base. As it stands now, Obama has declared the war in Afghanistan as the ‘Just War’, so I imagine that the anti-war politicians really don’t see Obama as a tool to use for rallying their base. But if they can split Obama from his ‘just war’ view, and get him to not support the war effort or accept that it is lost, then they would benefit. That is their prize, and going back to the Rolling Stone prize, you can see who benefits from whom.
The pro-war politicians will rally around the general that will insure success. They need a winner to rally around. So if they supported McChrystal and now an article like this is circulating a perception that he is out of control, or worse yet, helps to create a divide between all parties involved, then they will not benefit. You need a team who has a unified command and a unity of effort, and this article gives the impression that this is not happening. There is also the issue of Article 88 which prohibits officers from using ‘contemptuous words’ about the president and his staff. Pro-war politicians at this point look at this story as a threat to their chosen winner, and ultimately a threat to winning the war. But the narrative of the story points to a divided team, and these pro-war politicians need to address this in order appease their base.
The pro-war politicians could do two things. They could rally around the general, and especially if the administration and others accept his apology (and not fire him), or they could call for his head and get someone new in there that will work better as a team. In other words, if the General is looked at as the guy who is stronger than the President after the dust settles, because he thumbed his nose at him and his staff and they have not fired him, then he might be a guy they could rally around. Especially coming into election, and especially if the President is not popular in the polls. But they also need a guy that can seal the deal, and they really need a guy that the troops on the ground support. Because most of the base of pro-war politicians, are military and military families who all care about winning this thing.
Karzai is at the table as well, and success to him is just hanging on to power and collecting as much money as he can from the war effort. He will support anyone that will continue his good deal, and McChrystal is the guy–kind of. Or at least that is the arrangement that the general has set up. The general is working with Karzai and doing what is necessary to control him and work with him. Kind of like a SF operator working with a village chief. He has to, because there is no alternative. Karzai also knows that if the Taliban come into power, he is out, so if he wants to survive politically and even physically, he needs a strong general and western partner to insure that survival.
The Taliban are also at this table, and their strategy is simple. Keep terrorizing the population/government and just survive long enough to make it to this withdrawal date of July 2011. This date is all they need to win, because all they have to do is pour it on while everyone leaves. And as long as the people perceive the west as weak and unable to defeat the Taliban, they will give in to the Taliban.
Finally there is General McChrystal. Personally, I think this article was a way to test the political resolve of those at the top. If they fired him, then McChrystal can fade away from the war and not be attached to it’s ‘perceived’ demise. The whole ‘history book effect’ comes into play here as well.
If they accept his apology and keep the guy where he is at, then that means they are saying ‘we did not like what you said, but we need a win in this war’. It is the same reasoning for contracting with Xe for security work–they might not like them, but they are the best, and for wars, you need the best of the best to win. So in essence, McChrystal was probing the defenses of these leaders at the ‘poker table’, to see what their position is on his command and the strategy.(calling their bluff or trying to determine their cards in the game) If you look at his history in war and life, you can see that this is exactly how he operates. He is testing them. Because an acceptance of the general’s apology, is also an acceptance of the fact that he ‘is the best man’ for the job. The general needs that acceptance in order to go after what he really needs for a victory in Afghanistan, and that is time.
I really think all of this boils down to one thing, and that is that stupid withdrawal date of July 2011. If COIN takes as long as most of the experts claim it takes, then attaching a time frame to the current strategy is stupid. The general knows this, and this was a huge debate with the Iraq war. During that time, it was debated furiously during the presidential debates and between the pro-war and anti-war crowds. With Iraq, the narrative was ‘get out now’ versus ‘leave based on success and results’. The latter is what we went with, and that is what worked.
A withdrawal should only be based on victory, a retreat is what happens when you lose. I personally think this article was McChrystal saying ‘if you want me in charge of this war effort, you must give me time and the flexibility to win’. Because as it stands now, to seal any kind of a victory in Afghanistan by July of next year is impossible. I think most observers would say so as well, and this article symbolizes the very battle between all parties who have a stake in this war and the pressing issue of time. Each player in this game looks at time as a leverage for their specific goals in this game. Each player is also looking at their place in the history books and their political survival.
There are plenty of angles to this war, and I am sure I am missing a few in this discussion. Below I posted a few pieces of the article that were interesting to me. Anyway, check out the entire article and let me know what you think. Things are changing pretty quickly and it will be interesting to see how this unfolds over the days and weeks. –Matt
Edit: 6/23/2010 – And he is replaced by General Petraeus. Wow, and all because of an article from Rolling Stone. He played his cards, he lost, and now there is a new player at the table.
——————————————————————
By Michael Hastings
July 2010
(Pieces of the article are posted below–all curse words edited)
Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a “bleeding ulcer.” In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it’s precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn’t want.
Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it’s going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. “It’s not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win,” says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. “This is going to end in an argument.”
*****
Part of the problem is structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk s**t about many of Obama’s top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a “clown” who remains “stuck in 1985.” Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, “turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it’s not very helpful.” Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal’s inner circle. “Hillary had Stan’s back during the strategic review,” says an adviser. “She said, ‘If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.’?“
*****
By far the most crucial – and strained – relationship is between McChrystal and Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador. According to those close to the two men, Eikenberry – a retired three-star general who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 – can’t stand that his former subordinate is now calling the shots. He’s also furious that McChrystal, backed by NATO’s allies, refused to put Eikenberry in the pivotal role of viceroy in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill – a move that effectively increased McChrystal’s influence over diplomacy by shutting out a powerful rival. “In reality, that position needs to be filled by an American for it to have weight,” says a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations.
The relationship was further strained in January, when a classified cable that Eikenberry wrote was leaked to The New York Times. The cable was as scathing as it was prescient. The ambassador offered a brutal critique of McChrystal’s strategy, dismissed President Hamid Karzai as “not an adequate strategic partner,” and cast doubt on whether the counterinsurgency plan would be “sufficient” to deal with Al Qaeda. “We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves,” Eikenberry warned, “short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos.”
McChrystal and his team were blindsided by the cable. “I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” says McChrystal, who adds that he felt “betrayed” by the leak. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’?“
*****
McChrystal wound up ranking 298 out of a class of 855, a serious underachievement for a man widely regarded as brilliant. His most compelling work was extracurricular: As managing editor of The Pointer, the West Point literary magazine, McChrystal wrote seven short stories that eerily foreshadow many of the issues he would confront in his career. In one tale, a fictional officer complains about the difficulty of training foreign troops to fight; in another, a 19-year-old soldier kills a boy he mistakes for a terrorist. In “Brinkman’s Note,” a piece of suspense fiction, the unnamed narrator appears to be trying to stop a plot to assassinate the president. It turns out, however, that the narrator himself is the assassin, and he’s able to infiltrate the White House: “The President strode in smiling. From the right coat pocket of the raincoat I carried, I slowly drew forth my 32-caliber pistol. In Brinkman’s failure, I had succeeded.”
*****
In the late 1990s, McChrystal shrewdly improved his inside game, spending a year at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and then at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he co-authored a treatise on the merits and drawbacks of humanitarian interventionism. But as he moved up through the ranks, McChrystal relied on the skills he had learned as a troublemaking kid at West Point: knowing precisely how far he could go in a rigid military hierarchy without getting tossed out. Being a highly intelligent badass, he discovered, could take you far – especially in the political chaos that followed September 11th. “He was very focused,” says Annie. “Even as a young officer he seemed to know what he wanted to do. I don’t think his personality has changed in all these years.”
*****
The media, to a large extent, have also given McChrystal a pass on both controversies. Where Gen. Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher’s pet with a Ranger’s tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a “Jedi” commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn’t care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”) He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. “The f****ing lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. “You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the f*** is that?’ And it’s f****ing Stan McChrystal.”
It doesn’t hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the government’s darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. “JSOC was a killing machine,” says Maj. Gen. Mayville, his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents and hunting them down – often with the help of cyberfreaks traditionally shunned by the military. “The Boss would find the 24-year-old kid with a nose ring, with some f***ing brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming,” says a Special Forces commando who worked with McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. “He’d say, ‘Hey – you f***ing muscleheads couldn’t find lunch without help. You got to work together with these guys.’?“
*****
But however strategic they may be, McChrystal’s new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. “Bottom line?” says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. “I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.”
*****
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any f***ing sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a f***ing bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”
The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. “F***, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our f***ing gun on,” says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. “I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all f***ed up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don’t understand it themselves. But we’re f***ing losing this thing.”
*****
In mid-May, two weeks after visiting the troops in Kandahar, McChrystal travels to the White House for a high-level visit by Hamid Karzai. It is a triumphant moment for the general, one that demonstrates he is very much in command – both in Kabul and in Washington. In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai. The two leaders talk about how great their relationship is, about the pain they feel over civilian casualties. They mention the word “progress” 16 times in under an hour. But there is no mention of victory. Still, the session represents the most forceful commitment that Obama has made to McChrystal’s strategy in months. “There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic development,” the president says. “As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier.”
It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make. During the worst years in Iraq, when the Bush administration had no real progress to point to, officials used to offer up the exact same evidence of success. “It was one of our first impressions,” one GOP official said in 2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence. “So many lights shining brightly.” So it is to the language of the Iraq War that the Obama administration has turned – talk of progress, of city lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoric that just a few years ago they would have mocked. “They are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable,” says Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006. “That’s the game we’re in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn’t get run off. The facts on the ground are not great, and are not going to become great in the near future.”
*****
Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. “Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem,” says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. “A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we’re picking winners and losers” – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word “victory” when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.
Story here.