Author Topic: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements  (Read 12723 times)

Waitone

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OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« on: October 06, 2009, 05:57:32 PM »
What is the esteemed forum's consensus on Gen. McChrystal's public statements regarding the US mission in A'stan?  Is he an irregular warrior doing what irregular warriors do or is he insubordinate.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/6259582/White-House-angry-at-General-Stanley-McChrystal-speech-on-Afghanistan.html
Quote
According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.

The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid.
 
In an apparent rebuke to the commander, Robert Gates, the Defence Secretary, said: "It is imperative that all of us taking part in these deliberations, civilians and military alike, provide our best advice to the president, candidly but privately."

When asked on CNN about the commander's public lobbying for more troops, Gen Jim Jones, national security adviser, said:

“Ideally, it's better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.”

Asked if the president had told the general to tone down his remarks, he told CBS: "I wasn't there so I can't answer that question. But it was an opportunity for them to get to know each other a little bit better. I am sure they exchanged direct views."

An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".

When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."

He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

The remarks have been seen by some in the Obama administration as a barbed reference to the slow pace of debate within the White House.

Gen McChrystal delivered a report on Afghanistan requested by the president on Aug 31, but Mr Obama held only his second "principals meeting" on the issue last week.

He will hold at least one more this week, but a decision on how far to follow Gen McChrystal's recommendation to send 40,000 more US troops will not be made for several weeks.

A military expert said: "They still have working relationship but all in all it's not great for now."

Some commentators regarded the general's London comments as verging on insubordination.

Bruce Ackerman, an expert on constitutional law at Yale University, said in the Washington Post: "As commanding general, McChrystal has no business making such public pronouncements."

He added that it was highly unusual for a senior military officer to "pressure the president in public to adopt his strategy".

Relations between the general and the White House began to sour when his report, which painted a grim picture of the allied mission in Afghanistan, was leaked. White House aides have since briefed against the general's recommendations.

The general has responded with a series of candid interviews as well as the speech. He told Newsweek he was firmly against half measures in Afghanistan: "You can't hope to contain the fire by letting just half the building burn."

As a divide opened up between the military and the White House, senior military figures began criticising the White House for failing to tackle the issue more quickly.

They made no secret of their view that without the vast ground force recommended by Gen McChrystal, the Afghan mission could end in failure and a return to power of the Taliban.

"They want to make sure people know what they asked for if things go wrong," said Lawrence Korb, a former assistant secretary of defence.

Critics also pointed out that before their Copenhagen encounter Mr Obama had only met Gen McChrystal once since his appointment in June. 
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AZRedhawk44

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #1 on: October 06, 2009, 06:12:14 PM »
Quote
When asked whether he would support it, he said: "The short answer is: No."

He went on to say: "Waiting does not prolong a favorable outcome. This effort will not remain winnable indefinitely, and nor will public support."

Going just by this:

His perspective is skewed.  He probably hates Obama with a passion and is full of bile at the idea of taking orders from him.

Regardless if the US population put a Marxist clown failure into office or not, it's his duty to follow the orders presented by the White House or to pronounce those orders as unjust or immoral and face a Court Martial process.

It's his job to support orders from the WH.

It's not his job to worry about public support.

I'd love to see a youtube of the whole London speech, though, rather than an AP snippet of his remarks.
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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #2 on: October 06, 2009, 06:14:55 PM »
If he'd take his Fiber One, he could be a regular warrior.

My read on it is that he's serious as a heart attack about Afghanistan, which does him credit. Obama and co. 'know better' than he does, so he's taking his message to the people, more or less, to build up external pressure to get Obama to cave in the proper direction.

Headless Thompson Gunner

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #3 on: October 06, 2009, 06:31:56 PM »
I think he desperately wants to win this war, knows he can't without some support from El Presidente, and knows El Presidente won't support it unless made to do so.  I think McChrystal isn't above some unconventional tactics (a little political arm twisting, in this case) if that's what it takes to accomplish his mission and win the war.

I'm not sure it's a General's job to try to manipulate a sitting US President, and I'm sure some people will have some moral objections to him doing so.  Then again, it is a General's job to win the war.  That was the mission he was tasked with.  If winning the war means working against his own leadership, is that the General's fault or his leadership's fault?

I think the real outrage is that Barry Obama doesn't seem all that interested in winning the war.  Say what you will about GWB and his warfighting, at least you always knew W didn't want to see his country defeated in battle.
« Last Edit: October 06, 2009, 09:31:22 PM by Headless Thompson Gunner »

lupinus

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #4 on: October 06, 2009, 07:29:13 PM »
Quote
It's his job to support orders from the WH.

It's not his job to worry about public support.
It's his job to follow orders from the WH.  He does not have to support them.  As far as I know, he has yet to be given orders on the matter. 

As commander his primary role is to complete his mission, in this case his mission is to kick the ever loving *expletive deleted*it out of the Taliban and ensure that Afghanistan remains free and democratic.  While voicing open opinion against the big'O may be controversial and unorthodox, I say good on him.

Dragging ass politicians who thought they knew how to fight a war better then the military have cost us one major war and tens of thousands of American lives once just a few decades ago.  I for one like a General that is willing to go outside the box to keep that from happening again.

While the Government does not need to give the military a entirely blank check, they should recognize the military is damn good at what it does and should be allowed to do it when tasked to do so.  Hands down, we have the best fighting force in the history of man kind.  And we are letting a few piss ants in a cave hang on because we want to fight the war half assed. 
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.

Waitone

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #5 on: October 06, 2009, 07:54:18 PM »
Quote
An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."
An example of the arrogance that I find objectionable.  Pat the four star on the head and give him a push to the door.  I would put McChrystal's accomplishments side by side to any dweeb produced by this white house.  McChrystal is very good at what he does and has been very good for a long time.  Petraeus gets the press for calming Iraq down.  Truth be known, Patraeus had the good sense to let McChrystal do what he does so well which is kill bad guys.  If McChrystal is having a hard time doing what he is so good at, then the problem is above his pay grade.  In this case that points to one man, Obama.  I don't see McChrystal standing by without action while he sees his men killed.  Death in combat is reality and how the game is played.  However this last week we lost 8 to 10 troops at an outpost when the Taliban managed to put together a coordinated attack.  Reports are now filtering in that part of the problem was a shortage of lift choppers to pull the teams out.  Other reports are saying air support was delayed and / or hesitant to participate.  A third report says the main attack came out of a mosque.  All stories point to problems of either under-resourced missions or rules of engagement . . . . . which point directly at civilian leadership.

I'm beginning to believe what McChrystal did by calling Obama out was a measure of his frustration at not being able to get what he needs to do the job he was assigned.  Quitting is not a verb with which he is familar so the next step is attack from a different direction.
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Standing Wolf

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #6 on: October 06, 2009, 08:13:23 PM »
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Regardless if the US population put a Marxist clown failure into office or not...

AZRedhawk44, I see no reason to insult Marxist clown failures with that comparison.
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MechAg94

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2009, 08:53:51 PM »
Going just by this:

His perspective is skewed.  He probably hates Obama with a passion and is full of bile at the idea of taking orders from him.

Regardless if the US population put a Marxist clown failure into office or not, it's his duty to follow the orders presented by the White House or to pronounce those orders as unjust or immoral and face a Court Martial process.

It's his job to support orders from the WH.

It's not his job to worry about public support.

I'd love to see a youtube of the whole London speech, though, rather than an AP snippet of his remarks.

Did he actually get contrary orders from the White House?  Or has he just been told that the President is considering all options just as the media keeps saying? 

If the President is upset with him, he can replace him anytime. 
“It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”  ― Calvin Coolidge

MechAg94

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #8 on: October 06, 2009, 08:55:55 PM »
An example of the arrogance that I find objectionable.  Pat the four star on the head and give him a push to the door.  I would put McChrystal's accomplishments side by side to any dweeb produced by this white house.  McChrystal is very good at what he does and has been very good for a long time.  Petraeus gets the press for calming Iraq down.  Truth be known, Patraeus had the good sense to let McChrystal do what he does so well which is kill bad guys.  If McChrystal is having a hard time doing what he is so good at, then the problem is above his pay grade.  In this case that points to one man, Obama.  I don't see McChrystal standing by without action while he sees his men killed.  Death in combat is reality and how the game is played.  However this last week we lost 8 to 10 troops at an outpost when the Taliban managed to put together a coordinated attack.  Reports are now filtering in that part of the problem was a shortage of lift choppers to pull the teams out.  Other reports are saying air support was delayed and / or hesitant to participate.  A third report says the main attack came out of a mosque.  All stories point to problems of either under-resourced missions or rules of engagement . . . . . which point directly at civilian leadership.

I'm beginning to believe what McChrystal did by calling Obama out was a measure of his frustration at not being able to get what he needs to do the job he was assigned.  Quitting is not a verb with which he is familar so the next step is attack from a different direction.
I have to agree with your comments on that quote.  I was going to quote it as well.
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roo_ster

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #9 on: October 06, 2009, 09:15:54 PM »
McChrystal is not being particularly provocative when answering reporters.  BHO & his crew are just hyper-sensitive to anything that might be construed, even if looked at sideways through a urine sample, as criticism.

If you compare the relatively few media appearances by McChrystal in late 2009 to the numerous appearances by Patraeus back in late 2007, when he went before Congress to sell the Iraq surge, McChrystal is WAY behind.

The big stick the MSM and lefty stooges have been using on McChrystal is the London interview where what he said is at odds with what Joe Biden said.  Well, that is neither difficult nor alarming, since VP "Diarrhea of the Mouth" Joe Biden has been very loudly and verbosely on the wrong side of every foreign policy issue since 1979.

Now, I wouldn't put it past Stanley to insert some barbs, here & there, in a deliberate manner.  But, I think that if he were on a hard campaign to do so, there would have been much more swirl than one answer to one question in London.  And it wouldn't be Stanley his own self doing most the talking.  He has plenty of partisans of ability to insert data & memes into the air.

In any event, Hamlet-on-the-Potomac needs to stop dithering and make a tough decision in an arena where he can't disqualify his opponents by technical legal means.

--------

As for the recent deaths of our men in Nuristan, every report/rumor (whatever the content) points to an utter and complete lack of local human intel on the ground

The terrain is tough out there, what with the monsoon forests beginning in the valleys and going up a ways to the tree line and the way the valleys funnel movement through the area.  I can't recall the exact altitudes of the intervening ranges, but I suspect they are high enough to preclude rotor aircraft from crossing them, forcing them to move through the valleys and passes like ground transport.  And some of the valleys & passes are likely high enough themselves to make some of our rotor aircraft of limited utility.

To give you more an idea of the terrain, Jalalabad, south of Nuristan, is in a river valley with is a watershed for most of Nuristan & points south.  Jalalabad is roughly at the same altitude as Pristina in the Balkans.  Kabul is to the west & outside the monsoon forest area and Peshawar is to the east just beyond the Khyber Pass.  Like the Balkans, the folks live & work in the river valleys and are separated by ridgelines.  The valleys go up through into the Hindu Cush and end up at greater altitudes.
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RoadKingLarry

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #10 on: October 06, 2009, 09:24:21 PM »
It was my understanding that General McChrystal was hand picked by Obama to solve the problems in Afghanistan.
Not knowing exactly what his orders were I can't guess what they were but I would think they should have been something along the lines of "Go forth and kick their ass."
I've been in the position of being given a task and then having the required tools to complete that task taken away by my superiors when they KNEW that doing so would cause me to fail.
I suspect McChrystal has been set up to fail and be the fall guy for failure in Afghanistan.
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Dannyboy

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #11 on: October 07, 2009, 07:32:29 AM »
I suspect McChrystal has been set up to fail and be the fall guy for failure in Afghanistan.
I think he might suspect that too.  Which, I think, might explain the interview.  Supposedly, he had spoken to Obama only once since taking the job.  Once in how many months now?  I'm guessing he finally got to the point where he said, "My boss isn't giving me what I need to do my job so I'm gonna go over his head and see what happens."
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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #12 on: October 07, 2009, 08:34:52 AM »
Watch for McChrystal = McArthur comparisons in the MSM  in the next week or so.
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Gewehr98

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #13 on: October 07, 2009, 08:49:52 AM »
Quote
Watch for McChrystal = McArthur comparisons in the MSM  in the next week or so.

That's fine, as long as they also draw a BHO comparison to LBJ, too.  (ie, micro-managing a war from the Oval Office)   =(
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HankB

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #14 on: October 07, 2009, 09:32:58 AM »
Watch for McChrystal = McArthur comparisons in the MSM  in the next week or so.
Already saw one.

Of course, unlike McChrystal, MacArthur made numerous comments directly related to US Asian foreign policy well beyond the Korean conflict, and actually used the word "treason" in calling for an investigation into leaks of his reports to Washington - which was perceived as a direct attack on the Truman Administration. (MacArthur wasn't the hero some history books paint him as, but large parts of Truman's Korean "strategy" was worthy of criticism, if not outright condemnation.) But of course, without hard evidence, this was intolerable - and Truman fired MacArthur.

In Korea, some 37,000 American died, and North Korea is still Communist. Decide for yourself if Truman, MacArthur, or neither, were more correct in their strategy.

Now, for McChrystal, in response to a question, to respond with the type of resources that are needed in Afghanistan, is perfectly legitimate, so long as he didn't reveal any classified information. (No evidence he did.) For the Obamites to get their panties in a wad because one of their generals responded to a press question honestly, suggests that they want their generals to lie.

And to lie in such a way that a) they'll support mission fail; b) they'll increase US casualties; and c) they'll take the fall for POTUS policy failures.

If McChrystal is sacked, it won't be the first time that politicians have hurt our military efforts by hammering our warriors. (Perhaps most famously, they did it to Patton in WWII. Probably extended the war by months, and put the USSR in charge of most of Eastern Europe for a generation.)

It wouldn't surprise me if, once, again, Obama does the WRONG thing; it's getting to be a habit with him.

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Scout26

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #15 on: October 07, 2009, 10:48:18 AM »
McChrystal is being setup to fail.  

Obama and the democrats have calimed all along that Iraq was a "distraction" where we really need to be fighting - Afghanistan.

Well Iraq is winding down, so now it's time to put up or shut up.   But they can't stand the idea of the US actually winning, so they need to find a way to "lose" but in such a way that they can't be blamed for it.  Hence the delay in trying to figure out what to do and why Obama has only spoken to McChrystal twice and one of those was to chew him out.

All US military personnel swear an oath to protect and defend the constitution, not to the president.

Obama and Co. is trying to figure out how "not to lose" without winning.  Eventually the body count will build and we'll pull out plunging A-stan into deeper chaos.  I predict disaster. 
« Last Edit: October 07, 2009, 11:21:24 AM by scout26 »
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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #16 on: October 07, 2009, 01:46:52 PM »
Here is a bracing response to the McChrystal approach.

The roll-up is that McChrystal (and 99% of Western observers, left & rigth) is not taking the nature of Muslims into account.  He assumes that since Afghan muslims dont like it when Taliban & AQ kill Muslims, they will gravitate to the side of the USA.  The more likely outcome (in the author's opinion) is that they will still side with the jihadis who kill fellow muslims, becasue they are also killing infidels.



http://article.nationalreview.com/print/?q=NWQ3Y2U2NjNlYTAyMjI3MTAxZjYyOWZhNTU0Mzg3MzQ=

This Mission Is Not McChrystal Clear
Our troops are not in Afghanistan for a social experiment.


By Andrew C. McCarthy

Deep down, national-security conservatives know President Obama will not wage a decisive war against America’s enemies in Afghanistan. They also know that the young men and women we already have there are sitting ducks. Ralph Peters notes that our commanders, obsessed with avoiding civilian casualties, have imposed mind-boggling rules of engagement (ROE) on our forces, compelling them to retreat from contact with the enemy and denying them resort to overwhelming force — including the denial of artillery and air cover when they are under siege. As the Washington Examiner’s Byron York recently reported, even some Afghans are telling our commanders to “stop being so fussy . . . and kill the enemy.”

Yet the national-security Right is urging that we up the ante and put another 40,000 American lives at risk in this hostile theater, under this commander in chief and the same military leadership that dreamed up the ROE. Why? To attempt, under the rubric of “counterinsurgency,” the unlikeliest of social-engineering experiments: bringing big, modern, collectivist, secular government to a segmented, corrupt, tribal Islamic society — a society that has been at war with itself for three dozen years, which is to say, since the first futile effort to impose big, modern, collectivist, secular government ran smack into Afghanistan’s tribal Islamic ways.

Many on the right who urge the troop escalation want no part of the experiment. But they are hallucinating, too. They have convinced themselves that just because they would take the fight to our enemies, Barack Obama also is inclined to do so: the same Barack Obama who has decried American “militarism” since he was a Columbia undergrad, whose top foreign-policy priority has been to make nice with Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood, and who would have to overcome every fiber of his blame-America-first being to wage the war that needs to be waged. It is foolish to believe that, and it would be much worse than foolish to put American lives at risk based on that belief.

Obama plainly does not want to deploy more troops. He has boxed himself in, though, by following the Democratic practice of politicizing our national security. Though it is doubtful that Obama would see any military action in pursuit of American interests as righteous, his campaign hyped Afghanistan as the good war, the “war of necessity”— the better to denigrate Iraq as the bad war, the “war of choice.” He compounded the problem in March when, in the course of adding 21,000 troops to the Afghanistan mission, he couldn’t resist sniping at his predecessor, saying President Bush had turned a deaf ear to our commanders, who had been “clear about the resources they need.” So now Obama finds himself presiding over the good war of necessity with a commander — the commander he chose — who is quite clear that he needs 40,000 more troops.

That commander, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is a highly decorated veteran with impressive combat-command experience. He is also a progressive big-thinker on geopolitics, having been a military fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Harvard’s Kennedy School. One perceives more of the academic than the warrior in his startling white paper proposal for what is labeled a “counterinsurgency” campaign.

The proposal was strategically leaked to the Washington Post last week. The president’s knees are buckling as opportunistic politics give way to political accountability. The general has seen many a former courtier thrown under Obama’s bus and has no intention of finding tire tracks across his camouflage. McChrystal knows a commander’s declaration of what the mission requires carries enormous weight — for many of my friends on the right, it’s game, set, and match. With McChrystal having made public his expert assessment of what the mission demands, the president, a military novice, must either give it to him or be blamed for the ensuing failure.

The mission, though, must be the one the commander has been given by his civilian superiors, who answer to the American people. It is not the commander’s place to redefine the mission as something the American people never authorized and never would. But that is what McChrystal is endeavoring to do. He describes his plan as “revolutionary.” He’s sure got that right: The proposal would radically alter the understanding most Americans have about why we are in Afghanistan — as he puts it, his proposal would “redefine the nature of the fight.”

NOT OUR WAR
To be sure, a general’s military judgments are owed great deference, particularly by those of us without military backgrounds. But labeling McChrystal’s proposal a “military strategy” doesn’t make it one, and this proposal happens to be short on combat planning and long on sociological theory. On the latter, we don’t owe him any more deference than we do the ineffable Joe Biden.

Up until now, one might have thought our goal in going to war in Afghanistan was to vanquish al-Qaeda, its jihadist affiliates, and the Taliban — the de facto Afghan government we toppled because it facilitated al-Qaeda’s terrorist strikes against the United States from 1998 through 9/11. That certainly is the mission contemplated by the use-of-force resolution Congress passed in September 2001. President Obama seemed to grasp this back in March when he assured Americans that defeating al-Qaeda was his purpose in Afghanistan (and in Pakistan as well).

But that is not General McChrystal’s purpose. In fact, he does not even think this is America’s war. “This is their war,” the general says of the Afghans. “This conflict and country are [theirs] to win — not mine.” And because we are in Afghanistan primarily to make life better for the Afghans, he argues, “our strategy cannot be focused on seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces; our objective must be the population.” This, he writes, is a “war of ideas” in which “the key to changing [the Afghans’] perceptions lies in changing the underlying truths.” Good luck with that.

The main underlying truth in this conflict is Islam, a matter McChrystal barely mentions in his 60 pages of politically correct prose. The inconvenient truths are: that the population of Afghanistan is 99.5 percent Muslim; that the Afghans have longstanding alliances with our jihadist enemies, who helped them drive the Soviets out of their country in 1989 after a decade of brutal occupation; that even though a majority of Afghans does not want the Taliban back in power, the group still enjoys considerable support among a population that was largely content to live under its rule; that the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaeda enjoy enthusiastic support from Pakistan, where the United States is despised and where Sunni Islamism is seen as a useful weapon against India and Iran, which is why Pakistan created the Taliban in the first place. And even if McChrystal is correct that most Afghans do not oppose our presence in their country, many of them do, and many more non-Afghan Muslims view us as an occupying infidel force.

When McChrystal does get around to Islam, on page 38 of his opus, he botches it:

Quote
   A more forceful and offensive StratCom approach must be devised whereby [the insurgents] are exposed continually for their cultural and religious violations, anti-Islamic and indiscriminate use of violence and terror, and by concentrating on their vulnerabilities. These include their causing of the majority of civilian casualties, attacks on education, development projects, and government institutions, and flagrant contravention of the principles of the Koran. These vulnerabilities must be expressed in a manner that exploits the cultural and ideological separation of the [insurgents] from the vast majority of the Afghan population.

This remarkable passage comes after McChrystal repeatedly cautions readers that “We must never confuse the situation as it stands with the one we desire.” He should take his own advice.

There is considerable debate in Islamic circles about whether the Islamists’ rigid construction of sharia contravenes “the principles of the Koran.” Many Muslims claim these principles have been tempered by centuries of practice and fiqh (Islamic jurisprudence). To claim, however, that the Taliban are “flagrantly” in violation of Islamic principles, and that they will judged to be so by other Muslims, is wishful thinking. So is the suggestion that Afghan Muslims, culturally and ideologically, have more in common with us than with than with the Afghan Muslims we are fighting. General McChrystal should know that global polls show that 75 percent of Muslims want “to keep Western values out of Islamic countries” and endorse “a strict application of sharia,” which includes such time-honored penalties as death for apostasy and stoning for adultery.

Moreover, it is neither “indiscriminate” nor “anti-Islamic” to “use . . . violence and terror” against infidels who take up arms against Muslims and who attempt to sow the seeds of Western governance in Islamic countries. In the days following 9/11, even after condemning al-Qaeda’s mass-murder of innocent civilians, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi issued a fatwa forbidding Muslims to cooperate with the United States in Afghanistan. The sheikh subsequently declared that Muslims enlisted in the American military should refuse to participate in U.S. operations in Islamic countries. In 2004, he added that Muslims should attack occupying American troops in Iraq. If we combine the huge international audience of his weekly al-Jezeera television program and his Islam Online cyber-venture, Qaradawi is the most influential Sunni cleric in the world. He is also the chief theoretician of the world’s most influential Islamist organization, the Muslim Brotherhood (the same Muslim Brotherhood President Obama insisted on inviting to his ballyhooed speech in Cairo this past spring). Given a choice between Qaradawi and McChrystal, many Muslims, in Afghanistan and elsewhere, are going with Qaradawi.

When McChrystal is not getting Islam hopelessly wrong, he makes the fatal error of ignoring it — a mistake that has characterized U.S. strategic thinking for at least two decades. Thus he asserts, for example, that “the insurgents have two primary objectives: controlling the Afghan people and breaking the coalition’s will” — as if there were no rationale (besides the unremarkable tyrannical impulse) for “the insurgents” to behave this way. But the Taliban and its allies want to control the Afghan people in order to reinstitute what they see as the purified Islam of Mohammed’s Companions. They are not just “insurgents,” they are jihadists who see themselves as pursuing a divine commandment to impose Allah’s law. In a great many cases, they are doing so in their own country, and with the support and respect of many of their countrymen.

So while McChrystal is correct that a majority of Afghans (especially those who practice more moderate strains of Sufi Islam) rejects the Taliban, a sizable minority sympathizes. Even if that were not so, rejecting the Taliban’s barbarous methods and austere agenda hardly means that Afghans reject Islamism more generally. And even less does it mean that most Afghans will come to see themselves as more aligned with Americans than with our enemies, their fellow Afghan Muslims. In Islam, there is endless intramural rivalry and discord; still, that is put aside in conflicts with non-believers — the unity of the umma, the global Muslim nation, takes precedence.
(cont in next post)
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

roo_ster

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #17 on: October 07, 2009, 01:47:19 PM »
(remainder from above)
BRINGING HOPE AND CHANGE TO AFGHANISTAN
What would bring Afghanistan’s tribal, Islamic population over to our side? Let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that McChrystal is right and Afghans uniformly see the Taliban as their tormentors. Are we going to kill or capture all the Taliban? No: not our job; according to General McChrystal, we’re there to convince the Afghans that doing so is their job.

Given all the concern on the right that abandoning Afghanistan would be a propaganda coup for America’s enemies, shouldn’t this be something of an eye-opener? America’s commander in the theater doesn’t think that we’re in Afhganistan to fight our enemies. We are there, he says, to train Afghans to fight America’s enemies. The McChrystal plan anticipates that we will do precisely what McChrystal’s supporters on the right say we must not do: leave Afghanistan with the Taliban and al-Qaeda still causing trouble. All the McChrystal plan does is put that day off for a couple of years, until the Afghan army and police force purportedly are up to the task of doing what we haven’t done. It’s their war, not ours.

So if it’s not our war and we’re not focused on workaday war-making — things like “seizing terrain or destroying insurgent forces” — what should we be doing in Afghanistan? Well, for one thing, General McChrystal says we should be fostering the “development and use of indigenous narratives to tap into the wider cultural pulse of Afghanistan.” Pretty hip for a military objective. But perhaps not as trendy our primary task: McChrystal says we’ve sent our soldiers to address “a crisis of confidence among Afghans — in both their government and the international community.” How’s that work?

First we have to stop being so “pre-occupied with protection of our own forces.” All that fighting we’ve been doing amounts to the trivial pursuit of “tactical wins that cause civilian casualties or unnecessary collateral damage.” We’ve been too distant “physically and psychologically . . . from the people we seek to protect.” We’ve got to get with it and understand that “security may not come from the barrel of a gun. Better force protection may be counterintuitive; it might come from less armor and less distance from the population.”

That may fly at the Kennedy School, and it would make a fine cover essay for Foreign Affairs. It is likely to prove less persuasive to the families of our young men and women in uniform. They read the newspapers, and to them it sure must seem that much of this population that so enthralls McChrystal is working with, and selling our troops out to, the Taliban.

What, in any event, would McChrystal have us do once we get up close and personal with the Afghans? The general posits that, with our “improved and evolved level of understanding,” we can build the Afghans a bigger, better central government: one that is accountable, is able to “raise revenue,” provides better services, takes responsibility for national security, and is a positive force in the lives of remote tribal enclaves. McChrystal grants that this is an uphill climb. “The recent Presidential and Provincial Council elections” — the ones that the incumbents attempted to steal — were “far from perfect,” and Afghanistan’s maze of tribal constituents “have traditionally sought a degree of independence from the central government.” Sounding more like a Democratic strategist than a general in command of a hot war, McChrystal speculates that the country will be transformed by the pioneering “National Solidarity Program,” to say nothing of the “Afghan Social Outreach Program.” Can health-care reform be far behind?

In post-9/11 America, Islam is a “religion of peace,” and that’s that. We’ve learned to say and think nothing further on the subject. What causes terrorism and drives terrorist recruitment is Abu Ghraib, or Gitmo, or unemployment, or anything other than Islam. It might be worth considering a little modern Islamic history. Afghanistan was slow to radicalize. After the Anglo-Afghan wars of the 19th century, Britain was content to influence it but had no appetite to occupy it. Its interaction with the West was minimal. By contrast, Islamism grew like wildfire in what became Egypt and Pakistan. Those Muslim territories had been occupied by Western powers that attempted to plant Western culture, institutions, and governance. This provoked virulent resistance from devout Muslims, who saw the effort — well-meaning or not — as an existential threat to their civilization. Islamism was spawned in the universities but rapidly became a mass movement.

Afghanistan was not radicalized until the mid-Seventies when the imposition of another Western idea — Marxism — was attempted. This sparked an Islamist revolt that sprang first out of Kabul University. The movement metastasized after the 1979 Soviet invasion, which prompted American and Saudi funding of the mujahideen (to the tune of $6 billion), much of which went to the most extreme Islamist elements, including Gulbuddin Hekmatyar — the warlord and former engineering student who was a key ally of Osama bin Laden, who would later become Afghan prime minister, and who to this day fights alongside al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

This history should give us pause. Let’s say one were inclined to think, as General McChrystal is inclined to think, (a) that we could transform Afghanistan into something resembling a modern social democracy, complete with vibrant educational programs, and (b) that it is appropriate to make doing so the job of the United States military. How is that going to improve American national security against Islamist terror? To the contrary, the likelihood is that the effort will catalyze Islamism. It won’t matter that we think we are helping; we will be perceived by millions in the Muslim world, including in Afghanistan, as infidel occupiers who are trying to undermine Islamic culture. And the opposition’s epicenter will be the very schools we are encouraging the Afghans and our other allies — like the Saudis — to build. Have you seen what Saudi education is like in Virginia? What do you suppose these allies of ours are teaching in Kandahar?

We have only one military mission in Afghanistan, and it is not to protect the Afghan population, who are not properly our concern so long as they don’t allow their country to be a launching pad for attacks on the United States. Our troops are in Afghanistan because we, not the Afghans, are in a war to destroy al-Qaeda and its enablers — the Taliban, Hekmatyar, and the Haqqani network, all of which draw support from Pakistan. Obviously, we should always try to avoid civilian casualties in achieving our objectives. But this is a war, and our objectives take precedence. Afghan and Pakistani civilians will best be protected if we use the back-breaking force necessary to achieve our objectives as swiftly as possible; American civilians and troops will best be protected by making clear that if America is threatened again our troops will be back again — and not to bring hope and change.

A well-meaning social experiment masquerading as a counterinsurgency — oblivious to the unintended downsides and bent on delegating our counterterrorism work to the Afghans a couple of years hence — is not a good reason to have any troops in Afghanistan, much less to send in 40,000 more. The nice, friendly war — in which we pretend that we love the wonderful native people, have a quarrel solely with their wayward fringe, fight only until our enemies scatter but not until they are defeated, and define success (rather than victory) by how much we improve life for the indigenous population — is a delusion. If we’re not up for the real thing, we should leave Afghanistan now. Those who worry that we would give al-Qaeda a huge propaganda victory should consider that we’re already giving them one by hamstringing our warriors and exhibiting a failure of will.
Regards,

roo_ster

“Fallacies do not cease to be fallacies because they become fashions.”
----G.K. Chesterton

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #18 on: October 07, 2009, 02:01:09 PM »
I would say the problem is not Islam, but tribalism.  It is that tribalism that pushes Afghans together (A Pashtun sees you attacking another Pashtun...hilarity ensues), which brings otherwise moderate (from a religious perspective) Afghans together with the more radical sects.  They overlook their religious differences in deference to their tribal similarities.

Chris

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #19 on: October 07, 2009, 06:19:31 PM »
Quote
It's his job to follow orders from the WH.  He does not have to support them.
Only partly right: obey, yes. But once orders are given, an officer must do everything in his power to see that subordinates follow the order as well. That means supporting the order to his troops. He doesn't have to like it or "support it" personally; but publicly, yeah-obey and support.

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #20 on: October 08, 2009, 04:57:17 PM »
LN-

Yes, he has to obey them.  And in doing so, he has to at least appear to support them.  I was speaking of personally supporting them.
That is all. *expletive deleted*ck you all, eat *expletive deleted*it, and die in a fire. I have considered writing here a long parting section dedicated to each poster, but I have decided, at length, against it. *expletive deleted*ck you all and Hail Satan.

dogmush

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #21 on: October 08, 2009, 05:34:42 PM »
Last I checked, Joe Biden wasn't in the Chain of Command.  The general doesn't have to support his stupid idea's more any more then any Mayor Bloomburg's or Sarah Palin's.

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #22 on: October 08, 2009, 06:35:53 PM »
I don't consider this a partisan issue, this is an issue about how active duty general staff should behave.

An active duty generals job is not to win wars, it is to do what his civilian boss tells him to do to the best of his ability.  And his job is *certainly* not to gauge public support and comment on the home politics surrounding an issue.  If he disagreed that is fine, he can talk to the potus and his advisors and explain himself.  If he really can't take what they tell him to do, then he should quit and write a memoir about it after the war is over.

Here you have a situation where a sitting general publically said he would not follow a hypothetical plan given to him by his superior, and then infers that his strategy is the only strategy that will work.  If the potus decides to utilize a plan designed by someone else he has to either: a) fire the current general or b) have the troops listening to a sound bite where there commander says they are going to lose.  Even if he does fire the current general, any alternate plan has been damaged, even if the new plan is 'better'.

He can disagree with him all he wants privately, but to make a public statement saying that sounds like, "My way or the highway" is simply inappropriate.

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #23 on: October 08, 2009, 06:41:49 PM »
Quote
An active duty generals job is not to win wars
  Now that right there is funny.
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mellestad

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Re: OK, So What is Your Read on McChrystal's Public Statements
« Reply #24 on: October 08, 2009, 06:46:15 PM »
  Now that right there is funny.


Why?  If his main purpose in life is to win wars, then he will do whatever it takes regardless of what his civilian leadership tells him to do.  That is just begging for eventual military dictatorship.  The military is led by civilians for a reason.