Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s comments today in Brussels on Afghanistan remind me of BP’s analysis of the Gulf oil spill. He temporizes and distracts from the main point: it’s a continuing disaster with no known solution or end point.
I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s more important that we get it right than we get it fast.
Last December, I posted this diary, Afghanistan Accountability #2, on BMG with the specific milestone dates that McChrystal gave to the Senate. One of them was July 2010 (20 days from now):
“I expect there to be significant progress that is evident to us inside our force,” McChrystal said.
Whatever that means.
Today’s report sounded far less optimistic:
American-led operations against the Taliban in southern Afghanistan will happen “more slowly than we had originally anticipated,” the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan said Thursday.
So much for credibility. It was a mess, is a mess and there is no military way out other than endless, incredibly costly occupation. But that seems OK with the general:
I think it will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I think it’s more important that we get it right than we get it fast.
No apparent rush to end this war.
The US has been expanding its troop strength in Afghanistan with no clear idea of what is needed to be successful or what successful even looks like. Furthermore, while there are target dates for troop withdrawal thrown around when questions arise, all too often there are no details behind the dates.
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p>This is leading to a situation where the Taleban and other insurgents (leaving out that we may in fact be the largest insurgent force in the country) feel emboldened to take even more drastic measures to secure their territory knowing all too well that the US is unsure about what it will ultimately do with regard to this conflict.
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p>There was a story in the June 10th London Times detailing the hanging death of a 7yr old in retribution for his grandfather taking a position against the Taleban. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/t… This leads to 2 observations:
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p>1) under the current approach to this conflict we will have a hard time defeating an enemy willing to go to such great lengths to suppress any outcry against their actions and positions. Without the local population supporting our actions we are destined to lose the conflict and far too many soldiers in the process.
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p>2) the US is a great place where someone can speak out against their political opposite and not worry about their 7yr old grandson being hung.
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p>God Bless the USA and its time that Washington find a way to end this conflict to the betterment of both US and Afghan citizens.
except that war is peace and as long as I keep going to the mall I know I’m doing my part.
The occupation of Afghanistan has now been going on longer than the Vietnam War. Not that there are any parallels between the two, of course. It’s just a coincidence that everyone used to call Afghanistan “The Soviet Union’s Vietnam.”
Alexander the Great didn’t do it.
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p>The British Empire didn’t do it.
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p>The USSR didn’t do it.
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p>And the USA won’t do it.
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p>What is it?
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p>Conquer and control Afghanistan.
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p>It has been 8 years since we invaded. We have not captured Bin Laden, and the Taliban is still around.
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p>Are we going to be there for 20 years? 100 Years?
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p>But instead of pulling out, we’ll stay and waste lives for nothing.
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p>The brass wants it that way, and they will be backed by the media gasbags, who will say that it “must be done.”
McChrystal seems to want to return to the Friedman units that were so successful at keeping us in Iraq forever.
“I think it’s more important that we get it right than we get it fast.”
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p>Of COURSE that is the responsible thing to both say and act on. If we are more concerned about fast we will almost certainly live to regret it.
If I believed they had a clue, taking it slower to get it right would make sense. I think they know how to “win” in Afghanistan about as well as BP knows how to fix the Gulf. Yes, there should be an urgency to taper off and eventually end our involvement in a war that is ill-fated. The faster, the better. Do the best you can to protect military and civilians in the withdrawal, but withdraw.
All Obama has to do is stay an inch to the left of the Republicans, and even most of BMG will vote for him again.
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p>So… enjoy the triangulatin’ ride.
and other dour liberals were warning back in 2008 that there was no real liberal running for the Democratic nomination and that a Democratic President would require more pressure than a Republican President.
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p>Any liberal remembering the Carter and Clinton Administrations would not be surprised by the triangulating ways of the Obama Administration. In fact, Obama has been better than either so far.
If we want to end these pointless wars, we have to re-institute the draft. That, and only that, will do it — and fast.
On the face of the Afghan war, you’d think it ridiculous that a nation militarily powerful beyond belief runs a long war against people that boast – at best – infantry weapons. The Goliath of the United States fields weapons that bring fear to the hearts of most of its civilized enemies. The Taliban enemy is outnumbered 20 to 1. Yet the US military calls for more manpower.
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p>President Reagan called the Taliban leaders the “George Washingtons of their country”. In the 1980s they were heroes as they fought with few weapons against their Soviet invaders. Now we are the invaders with our hands on the opium crop and interests in a gas pipeline.
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p>The Soviets lost because they had nothing they could take away from the Afghans. The cities were destroyed, the economy didn’t exist, no infrastructure was present. The people with the assets were only the Soviets.
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p>So this war goes the way all wars go when an agrarian foe fights a technically superior one. Genocide. As with the wars against the indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, Australia, the Pacific Islands, and the disarmed people of Europe in the 1940s, the endless wars can only be “won” with endless carnage directed at the native peoples.
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p>We see it time and again. We are told our own people are racially or morally or intellectually superior. Our foes are the opposite. The enemy does bad things. Our bombing of helpless unarmed people is, on the other hand, simple error.
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p>Will we corral the people as the British, French, Germans, Israelis, Serbs and let the science of calorie nutrition exterminate them? Or will we use quick biological, chemical or nuclear weapons on their masses?
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p>What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea. –Mohandas Gandhi
From Inter Press Service, 6/12: