Uncle J touches on it below,but as someone who just said goodbye to his son this weekend as he deploys to Afghanistan, I'm much more interested in that war than I might otherwise be. As it happens, General Stanley McChrystal's assessment has been excerpted by Bob Woodward in the Washington Post. It is a rather blunt assessment - he needs more forces or we risk "mission failure". Let me begin this by saying I don't care if you are for or against our being in Afghanistan - we're there. Staying or leaving are obviously the two options we have at this point. The present political leadership told everyone who would listen as they were campaigning for the job that Afghanistan was the "good war" and the "necessary war" and we needed to prosecute it with an eye on eliminating the threat al Qaeda posed and removing the country as a safe-haven. Given the circumstances and situation there that is a very difficult mission fraught with not only danger but obviously requiring a real commitment in blood and treasure. Faced with a growing and more adept insurgent foe, a corrupt and incompetent host nation government, and a neighboring state under both duress and threat from the same enemy, the situation that confronts both the military and civilian leadership is an extremely difficult one. But, as McChrystal notes, "While the situation is serious, success if still achievable". Note that the word used is "success", not "victory". I'm not one to quibble about those words. Victory is used in a military sense. Victory is success. But we all know that while the military is an integral part of any success we might have there, ultimately it can't "win" the day by itself. Success will be defined as leaving a sovereign nation capable of governing and defending itself when we eventually leave. We may not like that definition, we may not like the fact that we're again engaged in nation building and we may not like the fact that such an endeavor is going to take years, possibly decades to achieve - but that is the situation we now find ourselves in. If we were to abandon Afghanistan now, we'd see it quickly revert to the state it was in 2001 - ruled by Islamic fundamentalists and a safe-haven for our most avowed enemies. We have to decide now whether or not we're going to commit to the "long war" to achieve the success I've outlined or whether we, like many nations before us, will leave Afghanistan to its fate and suffer the consequences such an abandonment may bring in the future. It Is "Fish Or Cut Bait" Time Our national leadership must now make that hard decision. This is no time for equivocation. It is no time for years worth of study and debate. General McChrystal makes that very clear in his assessment: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." And he makes clear another very important point, one that the civilian leadership needs to understand. "Further, a perception that our resolve is uncertain makes Afghans reluctant to align with us against the insurgents." Prior to the surge in Iraq, the same sort of perception existed within the Iraqi population. Until we made a firm commitment to stay and protect them, Iraq did not begin to improve. Gen. McChrystal is simply noting the same dynamic understandably exists in Afghanistan. He's also tactfully saying that we must quickly prove to the population of Afghanistan that we are committed to protecting them while they do what is necessary to empower themselves, their government and their military to a level that they can protect themselves. Step one in that process is to quickly ensure that the commitment to do that is clear and the forces necessary to do it are forthcoming. That has got to come from national leadership and it has to be said in precise and unequivocal language. Unfortunately, given this weekend's performance, our national leadership has claimed to be "skeptical" about the need for more troops in the country. The time for debate is rapidly coming to a close. A decision must be made, and in relative terms, it must be made quickly. Whatever it ends up being it should be aimed at one of the two options I've outlined - successs or abandonment of the effort. What Has To Change Obviously that is all dependent upon the decision reached by the national leadership, however General McChrystal recognizes some rather daunting problems in the situation within the country and how we're fighting the war. He notes: 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." All of those things, then, must change for the positive. As our experience in Iraq tells us, that's a very difficult and time consuming job, especially when we talk about changing the culture of governance, stopping corruption and abuse of power and connecting the government to the people. As you might imagine, that's not a job for the military, but, instead the State Department and various of our other government agencies. So the question isn't just are we willing to commit the soldiers necessary to effectively conduct COIN, but are we willing to commit the civilians necessary to properly establish a functioning government in a nation which has never had one? Without that sort of commitment, we can send all the soldiers we have for as long as we want too but we'll never achieve the success necessary to leave Afghanistan. McChrystal further notes: "Afghan social, political, economic, and cultural affairs are complex and poorly understood. ISAF does not sufficiently appreciate the dynamics in local communities, nor how the insurgency, corruption, incompetent officials, power-brokers, and criminality all combine to affect...
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Posted
Sep 21 2009, 01:13 AM
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BLACKFIVE