From McChrystal to Petraeus: A choice for security at an unpleasant crossroads

Guest post by Wade C. Barnes 

Wade Barnes is a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a veteran naval officer, and a fellow at the Truman National Security Project. He is a graduate student at Dartmouth College’s Tuck School of Business and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. This is his first guest post at The Reaction.

The circumstances that culminated in the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal as Commander of U.S. and NATO Coalition Forces in Afghanistan should rightfully disappoint every citizen of the United States. Though this incident should not discolor the general's 34 years of faithful service, we as a nation deserve better than flag officers who speak out publicly against their superiors.

As a former military officer, I believe that President Obama's decision to accept General McChrystal's resignation was inevitable given the tone and public nature of his gaffe. The president's subsequent selection of General David Petraeus as General McChrystal's successor, however, represents a strategic choice that will ultimately enhance American national security.

Sometimes leadership means choosing the right person for the job. By appointing General Petraeus to lead coalition forces in Afghanistan, President Obama selected the U.S. military officer most skilled in the nuances of modern warfare. An expert in counterinsurgency – he literally helped write the manual – General Petraeus will arrive in Afghanistan at an inflection point.

Following a difficult campaign in Marja, in the midst of preparations to apply pressure on Kandahar, and with the administration's July 2011 phased withdrawal deadline fast approaching, General Petraeus faces a tough road to hoe. Nevertheless, as General McChrystal's direct superior and having recently salvaged the U.S. war effort in Iraq, there is no soldier, sailor, airman, or marine better equipped to deliver the conditions necessary for Afghans to establish functional self-governance.

Leadership by example is the best kind of leadership. It is too easy to accuse the White House of blunting U.S. efforts in Afghanistan by relieving General McChrystal of command. This only tells half of the story. When junior officers or enlisted service members undermine the authority of their senior chain of command, this is termed "insubordination" and is often addressed with non-judicial punishment. When generals and admirals snipe at the civilian chain of command, however, it grinds at the very core of our national security architecture.

President Obama demonstrated leadership by example when he said, "I welcome debate... but I won't tolerate division." After all, valuing debate over division is the lubricant that facilitated our military's transition from a reactionary peacetime service on September 10, 2001 to a dynamic fighting force capable of prosecuting pitched battles and counterinsurgency alike in pursuit of U.S. national security interests.

America suffers when tensions such as these emerge from the shadows. In 1951, General Douglas MacArthur reminded our country that "old soldiers never die, they just fade away." There is no joy in watching General McChrystal walk down this road, only somber reflection on the otherwise meteoric career of a decorated warrior and a venerable member of the Army's post-Powell New Guard.

President Obama showed wisdom by selecting a devoutly apolitical military leader who packs as much diplomacy under his belt as he does strategy and tactics. If America is to emerge stronger and safer from the Afghan conflict, we must reject the pall of Afghan defeat that shattered Soviet vitality in 1989. Already energized by a comprehensive strategy and sufficient resourcing under the Obama administration, the appointment of General Petraeus to replace General McChrystal will lend terminal velocity to the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan. General Petraeus has the vision and experience to make that strategy a reality.

The stakes in Afghanistan

Guest post by J.F. Murphy

J.F. Murphy is a former Marine infantry officer and Iraq veteran who graduated from the U.S. Navy's SERE program. He is a fellow of the Truman National Security Project.

Ed. note: This is Jim's second guest post at The Reaction. You can find his first (from back in May), on how "enhanced" interrogation undermines American security and violates military values, here. -- MJWS

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After nearly two months of deliberation, some have criticized the Obama Administration of foot-dragging a decision on Afghanistan. As a veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, I could not disagree more. If the previous administration had put such care into its approach toward Iraq and Afghanistan, we might not be facing the difficulties we face today.

An informed decision is not the same as indecision. Given the complexities of securing Afghanistan and turning the tide against the insurgency, it is critical that our commander-in-chief understand the nature of the challenge, and I applaud the president for taking the time to acquire that understanding.

But to succeed in Afghanistan, we need more than a president who understands what we're up against. We need the American people to understand. To achieve this understanding, I would suggest that there are two major trends in our favor that the American people ought to know.

First, Pakistan has finally recognized the need to confront al Qaeda and the Taliban within its own country, conducting significant operations over the last year to retake Taliban controlled territory.

This is a tremendous shift by Pakistan, which has historically funded terrorist organizations aimed at attacking India. They are in the fight against terrorism now. This gives us the opportunity to crush al Qaeda and the Taliban in the region, with Pakistan attacking them from its own territory in the east, while U.S. and allied forces attack from the West in Afghanistan. This is a vice we should tighten.

Second, America now "does" counter-insurgency. The attitude, tactical skills, and operational ability needed to defeat an insurgency are very different from the conventional warfare abilities that have guided our military thinking since World War II.

Leaders such as Generals Petraeus and McChrystal have recognized this fact and begun to conduct military operations accordingly. The Army and Marine Corps also gained counter-insurgency skills the hard way, during the Iraqi crucible, learning that the key to defeating insurgents lies in protecting the population.

Success in Afghanistan will only come if the Afghan people see the U.S.-led mission in a positive light, which requires the military to put a premium on protecting people. With a counter-insurgency strategy firmly in place, securing this long-term support has now become a possibility.

Of course, these developments alone do not guarantee easy success in Afghanistan. There are, however, no real alternatives. The two most popular suggestions – walking away from Afghanistan or returning to a failed "counter-terror" strategy – carry far too much risk.

Walking away from Afghanistan would be a disaster. We did that once before, after the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan in the 1980s. The result? Without an American hand in the region, Afghanistan disintegrated into chaos. Pakistan supported the least bad path toward stability, the Taliban. The Taliban eventually gave legal sanctuary to al Qaeda, which used Afghan territory to prepare the 9/11 attacks.

Were we to leave Afghanistan now, the region would spiral out of control once again. Except this time, Pakistan is a nuclear nation. Getting out of the game now would allow extremists to get closer to nuclear weapons, a decidedly unacceptable situation.

Similarly, a counter-terrorism approach to Afghanistan is no real solution. We have been trying that for eight years, with large unit operations to hunt bandits, and drones to kill Taliban and al Qaeda leaders. Though we have eliminated a significant number of bad guys, we have also alienated a lot of fence-sitters, and the insurgency has grown stronger. Clearly, we need a new approach.

So what should that approach look like? First, the U.S. must commit to defeating the elements of the Taliban who would either challenge the legitimate governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan, or harbor members of trans-national terrorist organizations.

Then we need to follow up these commitments with troops and time. Give General McChrystal what he needs to get the situation under control, and the time he needs to train more Afghan forces. The sooner the Afghans can protect themselves, the sooner we can bring our troops home.

There won't be a Victory-Afghanistan day that we will all be able to look back on thirty years from now. We live in a different world that includes a different kind of war and a different kind of victory. But the path to that 21st century victory is on the table right now. A steadfast commitment from the United States will ultimately help the Afghan people to pursue a better future for themselves and bolster our security by denying safe haven to terrorists and extremists.

Whither U.S. Afghan policy? How many more troops?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

CBS News is reporting that President Obama has decided to send about 40,000 more troops to Afghanistan, upping the U.S. military presence to about 100,000 by 2012, which is more or less what McChrystal wanted:

The first combat troops would not arrive until early next year and it would be the end of 2010 before they were all there. That makes this Afghanistan surge very different from the Iraq surge, in which 30,000 troops descended on Baghdad and the surrounding area in just five months.

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The buildup would be expected to last about four years, until McChrystal completes his plan for doubling the size of the Afghan army and police force.

The White House is denying that any decision has been made, which suggests that a decision has in fact been made. Unless there really is tension between the White House and the Pentagon, and unless Jim Jones is right, or, rather, telling the truth:

Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false. He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources.

Let's hope so. Because it wouldn't be as simple as sending over more troops. Spencer Ackerman:

[W]hy the hell is Obama doing it this way? Because there's little other choice. But you won't know that from reading the CBS piece. Nor will you get any discussion of the obvious question the whole thing begs. If you can’t get these troops to Afghanistan in the time that McChrystal says it'll make a difference ("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," McChrystal Review, at section 1-2) then why should we do it?

Good question.

Elsewhere, Jerome Armstrong looks at the political angle:

In no small part, Obama won the Democratic nomination because of his opposition to the invasion/occupation of Iraq, and he strongly opposed the Bush surge there. Now, he many times mentioned about Bush 'taking his eye off of the real war in Afghanistan' or some variation of the sort, but never said anything about sending in tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds, of more troops into Afghanistan. Did I miss that part? There is no way that Obama would have won a Democratic primary had he laid out that sort of plan. In fact, there's no way that we would have had a Democratic wave in '06 and a Democratic tsunami in '08 of wins, had the Democrats campaigned on the bait and switch of leaving Iraq, for Afghanistan.

But now, sources out of the Pentagon are saying that Obama is about to go for his own "surge" of troops as part of a long-term occupation of Afghanistan.

For now though, I refuse to believe that Obama and the Democrats will make this huge a mistake. It's too unbelievably self-destructive to accept.

We shall see.

Sexism, plain and simple

By Michael J.W. Stickings

According to a new National Republican Congressional Committee press release, referring to Nancy Pelosi, Gen. Stanley McChrystal ought to "put her in her place."

Which means what exactly? That the strong military man ought to ship the uppity woman back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, disenfranchised and disempowered?

So it would seem. Why else use that sort of language?

It's a reprehensible and indefensible slur, to be sure, but, as Steve Benen points out, what is also troubling is the actual content of the press release:

[T]he substantive nonsense of the NRCC press release is likely to be overlooked given this ugly condescension towards the House Speaker, but it's worth noting that the Republicans' campaign committee also argued that leading policymakers should simply "listen to a four-star general's assessments" on Afghanistan, and not consider their own judgment.

In other words, what the Republican Party -- and this isn't just some random Republican, it's a party committee -- is saying is that civilian leadership ought to kowtow before the military. Which is, when you think about it, rather un-American.

Or, rather, it ought to do so only when it's Democratic. When it's Bush and Cheney running the show, along with their rubber stampers in Congress, it's fine for civilian leaders to push around the military.

Hypocrisy? Double standard? -- You expected something different?

An Afghan alternative?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

With McChrystal et al. pushing for a significant troop increase -- an irresponsible one, in my view, given that it's not clear anymore what the purpose of the war is -- this comes as something of a pleasant development:

President Obama is exploring alternatives to a major troop increase in Afghanistan, including a plan advocated by Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to scale back American forces and focus more on rooting out Al Qaeda there and in Pakistan, officials said Tuesday.

The options under review are part of what administration officials described as a wholesale reconsideration of a strategy the president announced with fanfare just six months ago. Two new intelligence reports are being conducted to evaluate Afghanistan and Pakistan, officials said.

The sweeping reassessment has been prompted by deteriorating conditions on the ground, the messy and still unsettled outcome of the Afghan elections and a dire report by Mr. Obama’s new commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal. Aides said the president wanted to examine whether the strategy he unveiled in March was still the best approach and whether it could work with the extra combat forces General McChrystal wants.

In looking at other options, aides said, Mr. Obama might just be testing assumptions — and assuring liberals in his own party that he was not rushing into a further expansion of the war — before ultimately agreeing to the anticipated troop request from General McChrystal. But the review suggests the president is having second thoughts about how deeply to engage in an intractable eight-year conflict that is not going well.

Yes, "testing assumptions." It is possible, of course, that the White House is just floating this development to give the appearance of serious internal debate -- and, of course, to make the president look good. I give full credit to the Times for considering this possibility, even if it credits it to anonymous "aides."

Still, I hope that Obama really is having "second thoughts" and that he is seriously considering alternatives to what the military brass want.

Given that this is now a war without a defined purpose, without a clear goal, and without an acceptable definition of what would constitute victory, the option of more troops -- and, with them, more war -- just isn't as desirable as it once may have been. And with the situation in Afghanistan deteriorating, or at least not improving in any real or sustained way, it doesn't make much sense to commit even more resources and to risk even more lives for the sake of what could become more and more of an insurmountable quagmire.

No one is saying -- well, I'm not saying -- that the U.S. should pull out of the region. Even if there is a significant troop drawdown, there are still the not insignificant matters of the Taliban, which is increasing in influence outside Kabul, and al Qaeda, which continues to find safe haven in the AfPak border region, to attend to. On this, Biden is probably right. Focus on narrower and more limited goals. Defend Kabul, perhaps, and target Taliban areas in Afghanistan, as needed, but address the greater threat of the terrorist stronghold, something the U.S. should have done a long time ago, when Bush et al. diverted attention and resources to Iraq.

Surely such a viable alternative like this exists. Obama would do well to consider the options, not just to rush into an escalation of a war that no longer makes much sense.

Woodward, McChrystal, and Afghanistan

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Greenwald:

Advocates of escalation in Afghanistan chose Bob Woodward to "reprise his role as warmonger hagiographer" by publishing Gen. Stanley McChrystal's "confidential" memo to the President arguing for increased troops. As Digby notes, the vague case for continuing to occupy that country is virtually identical to every instance where America's war-loving Foreign Policy Community advocates the need for new and continued wars. It's nothing more than America's standard, generic "war-is-necessary" rationale.

It's just the same old "experts" and "wise men" pursuing the same old failed policies.

What is needed is not more war, endless war, but, in Afghanistan at least, a justifiable rationale for the war to continue -- a purpose, a goal, a definition of what would constitute victory.

But what if there isn't, as there does not seem to be, such a rationale? Is it right to escalate a war without one? And is it right to send yet more men and women into such a war to risk their lives in purposeless battle?