The chatter I’ve been able to pick up about General McChrystal is interesting: while publicly McChrystal says everything right about being population-centric and all that, very few, and I mean this seriously, VERY few of the groundpounders within USFOR-A are getting excited about finally executing a proper counterinsurgency. Instead, all the excitement is about “finally” being able to “take the fight to the enemy,” “now we get to kick some ass,” and similar sentiments.
In other words, at least a large number of soldiers, both within and without the U.S. command in Afghanistan, are excited about McChrystal’s reputation for killing—and not for his reputation as a “three block” counterinsurgent.
Spencer Ackerman noted yesterday something I had registered and just shook my head at during McChrystal’s confirmation hearings: dodging questions over his role in the Iraq war’s worst torture chamber, Camp Nama.
Sen. Russell Feingold (D-WI) said late last week that then-Special Operations commander Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal was not direct with lawmakers at his confirmation hearing regarding his approval of harsh interrogations by personnel under his control.
“[T]his testimony appears to be incomplete, at best,” Feingold said in a statement published in the Congressional Record June 11. For that reason and others, he said he opposed Obama’s nomination of McChrystal to lead the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan.
The challenge comes in McChrystal’s specific request to use the so-called “enhanced interrogation” techniques, coupled with CIA guidance to avoid activity there because of concerns about its legality.
Then there is this sixty day review coming up. Especially as I’ve met some of the people on it, I remain hopeful that it might be able to actually address some of the war’s shortcomings, but not optimistic: right now, McChrystal’s commanders are saying things like:
“We are going to bring the hurt to the insurgency and offer them an existential choice,” said another senior military officer.
“Those who are ideologically committed — we don’t expect them to change. They will fight, and they will die,” the officer said. “But for the many for whom ideology is not the motivation, we are going to offer them a serious motivation to stop, to make another choice.”
Right, because it’s not like every other commander in Afghanistan hasn’t already tried that. It has been the stated U.S. and Afghan policy to fight the ideologues, and “cleave” the non-ideologues from the insurgency since 2002. Hell, Ackerman himself wrote a lot of stories last year about how General McKiernan was trying to do just that. McKiernan got fired for… well, we still don’t really know. And now here’s McChrystal, saying the exact same thing his predecessors did, only with a reputation for conducting more assassinations and secret squirrel stuff that tends to infuriate, not protect, the local populations of Afghanistan.
So, while we can all rest easy that a General said what everyone else already had to get his fourth star, we still have no indication—none—that his command is going to be anything other than business as usual, only probably worse given McChrystal’s reputation and McKiernan’s humiliating removal. No indication, however, only means they’re not showing their hands. I sincerely hope McChrystal’s review group will actually examine the previous seven years of operations, doctrine, and strategy in Afghanistan, and not just do a news dive while coming up with the same tired old strategy. We desperately need change there, and starting from scratch—like the other four reviews—is not how to do that.
This post was written by...
Joshua Foust – author of 1801 posts on Registan.net.
Joshua Foust is a Fellow at the American Security Project and the author of Afghanistan Journal: Selections from Registan.net. His research focuses primarily on Central and South Asia. Joshua is a correspondent for The Atlantic and a columnist for PBS Need to Know. Joshua appears regularly on the BBC World News, Aljazeera, and international public radio. Joshua is also a regular contributor to Foreign Policy’s AfPak Channel, and his writing has appeared in the New York Times, Reuters, and the Christian Science Monitor. Follow him on twitter: @joshuafoust
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{ 9 comments }
Josh, you know as well as any that there has to be some fighting because you can’t just hug the Afghans into submission. What we NEED to be doing is conducting JOINT patrols with the ANSF to provide for the security of the local people. Then we will need to conduct some of those “dirty” night raids to take out key insurgent leaders and disrupt their operations. Once the population is secure, the PRT’s and NGO’s will have a much easier time doing their jobs and helping to bring governance and aid to the people. The problem we have with the targeted raids on insurgent leadership is that we have NO I/O campaign to back it up, so instead of spelling out the facts of why this person needed to be killed or captured, we are stuck defending ourselves against Taliban assertions that the guy was a squeeky clean, good Muslim, that was mercilessly attacked by the zionist-crusader army.
Of course, I think the biggest problem here is that everyone seems to understand COIN, but no one wants to implement the dangerous portions like, living amongst the population instead of holing up on a FOB. As a friend once put it, “Force Protection is not a viable strategy to win a counter-insurgency.”
Fritz,
Of course I know. I’m not advocating for an end to the fighting — in some reasons, there has to be a lot of it. What I am concerned about, however, is that there seems to be this unending cycle of “we’re finally going to focus on non-combat” while doing nothing of the sort. I agree with you — it takes moving away from FOBs, and setting up much smaller outposts, scattered throughout as much of the population as possible, for this to work.
The thing is, EVERYONE says this, and everyone says they want to reconcile who they can kill who they can’t. Eikenberry said it in 2005, Barno in 2004, and even Bomber McNeill would talk a pretty game while playing whack-a-mole from the FOBs.
My point isn’t that fighting is unnecessary, but that it must be smart, and the current leadership hasn’t demonstrated that it is smart. Otherwise, it’s just combat for combat’s sake.
Of course there must be more fighting. Otherwise more American buildings will fall to Afghanistan terrorists, flying Afghanistan aircraft, trained in Afghanistan flight schools, financed by rich ex-pat Afghanistan Islamic fundos!
Perhaps you might help the top-down review by writing a few posts about the strategic goals of our Expedition to Afghanistan. “Strategy must drive tactics” and so forth.
P.S. to the above comment: This is a great post, IMO. Or rather, another great post!
Was optimistic about McChrystal. Have heard two big things from him lately, first, that he wants to secure the population centers and cede the less populated areas. An SF guy saying this is shocking, counterinsurgency is not won in cities it’s won at the grassroots level, that is a fundamental theory the SF guys have preached for decades. And, uh, newsflash, we DO ALREADY control the population centers- the fact that now and then an attack occurs in Kabul is freaking these guys out? I said before, i spent 2008 in Khost, most of it near or ON the border and the way they got Khost under control was the 82nd’s Col Custer pushed his guys out into the field. Research this. Then the 101st pulled back, put the kid gloves on and the place went downhill real real fast. Why? Because they locals WANT the US and the ANA close by, they were begging for the ANA in particular to set up closer. THAT is security to them. I have bad news-you give up the boondocks in an insurgency you lose, and over time, more people are lost. People got to wake up and let the military do its job. It’s job, that we do for all of you, is to go find then KILL bad guys. Sorry, that’s the truth. And the people, the politicians, the press and the generals are hurting us and causing us more causalties, not helping. You all say nice things but it’s not true support.
Other big thing was today, new rules on airstrikes. Basically, the preferred method is now to quote ‘move on’ and ‘if we have to let them live to fight another day we will’. Oh my God. Quick story from ’08 in Spera. You might recognize that as where Tillman died. A known cesspool. Right by KG pass. One night our Scouts reported 20-30 guys camped out on top of a mountain in the middle of the night with AK’s and RPG’s. Called for an airstrike. Rejected. Command said they might be farmers. ??? Oh yeah, next morning, same spot, US convoy ambushed, 6hr firefight. Let them live another day????? This costs American lives, it has been for years, and it will only get worse now. Does that matter to anyone??? No one is TRYING to kill civilians over there but people it is a WAR, and battles are fought every day even if you all never hear about 99% of them. And all you hear is the bad stuff, from the bad guys side. That above story is not hearsay by the way, is is firsthand. Our hands are being tied tighter and tighter and it is, has, and will continue to result in our men and women paying the price. People need to wake up and accept the harsh reality that those deployed over there are living and get behind them and support them in good AND bad. Support them in their successes sure but after their mistakes too. Or you just a fair weather hypocrite. Thanks to all who truly back the military.
To C Halley–While I share your doubts about Stan McChrystal, I might point out that Stan really isn’t a SF guy. Look at his bio–he has one 14 month tour as an ODA Commander in the late 1970s–that’s 30 years ago–and the rest of his company/field grade time was with the 82nd and the Ranger Regiment. He did not join the SF branch when it was created in 1987, a subtle if important fact. Later he moved to JSOC as a general officer. His career exemplifies the door kicker mentality that has unfortunately dominated SOF since the mid-80s, but which has been necessary for promotion and selection for command. In essence, he has practically zero UW/COIN experience. All his CT experience doesn’t make him an unconventional warrior. He has shown no evidence of understanding what is necessary to make COIN work, especially in the fractured environment of Afghanistan that has chewed up foreigners for millennia. On top of that, the pressure is on politically TO DO SOMETHING THIS YEAR. Expect things to continue to go downhill.
18A, Sir
I think we would all agree, “TO DO SOMETHING THIS YEAR” is so easy, it can be started right now, but there seems to be no stomach for the real nuts and bolts of counter insurgency.
We’ve got a complete mid and upper level Army officer corps that is , hell, I can’t even say. It’s too easy to say incompetent, there has to be more to it than that; but the fact is everybody I personally know in my profession KNOWS how to conduct FID, knows how to conduct counter insurgency and we get the lip service from command. I learned more as a fire team member about CIW while assigned to the 82d in 1981 then all these “schools” and pre-mob “combat advisor” schools I had to suffer through. The point is not that I’m a super genius guerrilla fighter from birth or that those particular pre mob train ups are worthless, the point is the institutional knowledge is there for this type of thing but we have Gen Pertraeus being heralded for writing a fab new coin manual. Hell, the guy is lucky he wasn’t sued for plagiarism.
So what are the problems I see?
Much of what C hally writes is spot on. Hell, I’m on the other end of a big valley that separates the two of us in physicality but not apparently separating us from the big stupid that comes down from on high.
Did I get it wrong or was it just reported that Gen Petraeus comment something to the effect that , big FOBs are good, they protect the community surrounding it. WTF! How’s the security in Gardez? Hows’a bout Kwost, O-E’s doing ok because they figured it out (the bad guys) and the number one big honcho warlord happens to be our guy. They got it figured out here that if they don’t reign on the populous, don’t shoot/blow up/ambush the coalition forces and keep the corruption to a higher level, more refined, much like the US model, then everyone makes more money and the civil peace is a nice dividend. Still, we have new O3s and O4s coming in wanting some ones head, wanting to do fuel consumption logs, odometer logs and audits to “put an end to’ or “get that guy”. I swear to GOD, one genious got out a map, figured the distances and even asked the terp about the road conditions to “GET” the chief for falsifying a patrol report saying he had patrolled so many villages on a particular night during a particular time. “I don’t like being lied to and I’m going to prove the Chief lied, he could not have done this patrol”!
WTF#2! Where do they get these guys? I want the entire ISAF and US command to come down, give it the great big “democracy in action award’ and dictate this model as the national standard so we can all get the hell out of here. NO IEDs NO ambushes, NO soldiers attacked, NO civilians being kidnapped by authorities, NO violence visited among the civies by the IROA authorities. There’s more corruption in Chicago or Washington DC, but these hot rod O types see it as some personal mission to begin the reign of terror with the attitude that no paper clip go uncounted and no level of corruption, any, none, nadda, west point honor code crap.
The malfeasance and arrogance shown by my command, ARSIC-E is monumental, and it’s even more amazing given the fact that the east is kinda important, but more so that they command the God Damned FID THING! We sat, loaded up, waiting for our conop approval over 1 ½ hours while no one at ARSIC-E wanted to be the one, the one to take a decision, to commit to our approval so we could move 15 klicks and go to the aid of our Afghan brothers. We were going nuts. These were truly our brothers in arms, with our affections and respect earned but they won’t drop the gate for us unless we have approval. We sat, 20 minutes with no one answering the phone at the TOC, then getting the run around from 1st and 2d LTs who figured, even though they were there, they didn’t have the authority. This is all the while our guys is standing next to us, talking to his men in contact, begging for our help. Someone finally found a Major who told our team chief “I’m going to lunch, get back with that LT” and then he hung up the phone. We had 2 Apaches that couldn’t be diverted from their high priority routine escort mission to Tillman. We asked “can you dudes do a quick fly over, 15 klicks away?” …”nope, got this high priority routine escort to Tillman’ we said “yeh, we get that, put the damn Chinooks on a low hover off to the right there, you’ll be back, round trip in under 10”….”uh, yeh…NO”. That was the last straw and our chief went forth, saved his guys and got a confirmed 1 kill and one mortal wounded bad guy, more than these last 2 big Army Big missions combined. Ofcourse since we weren’t allowed to respond, someone sent some ANP from the area “up there’ and their ANP CHIEF got blown up by an IED in the process. That IED wouldn’t have made a dent in a cougar. ARSIC-E aint to concerned about that though.
This is just the latest example, there are enough to fill volumes and volumes of text and all the lip service to coin while building bigger and bigger FOBs; all the big air assault missions to nowhere ( air assaults look real good on OERs) while the bad guys own the valley 4 klicks away, ( I won’t write the rest because it is a bit sensitive) but there’s no sexy in starting today in a mud hut village, working daily, as in every day you are there with people, towards a goal 4 or 5 months down the road of separating them from the bad guys. Apparently nobody gets the fact if you win the trust of a valley, one village at a time, over months, with daily contact; your security and that of the villagers has become intertwined and you will never again have to ask “where’s the bad guys, are there IEDs?” because the villagers will tell you, before you have to ask. I’m not even asking you to do it, just don’t forbid me from doing it, it’s kind my job, really, trust me, it is.
All the surges, all the new boss same as the old boss but just bigger and better more of the same aint gonna do a damn thing towards any type of thing that will look like any type of win.
So there it is, Josh, give this a look, if your saner eyes than mine think I’ve crossed a line, edit it, I don’t see that I have and I am tired of all the “we get it, we got it” crap, because no, you don’t get it.
Big FOB’s provide security only to those who live on them and do a deployment without ever leaving it. As vengeance7 points out, Khost? Gardez? How about Sharona? And oh boy do we have a lot of big FOB’s, all gonna get their combat patch and tell the same story about that time a rocket almost hit their FOB. We already have half the freakin army in kabul or at Bagram, i guess that’s what they mean by big fob’s providing security. But guess what, the reason the flagpole in Kabul doesn’t get hit is tribal and $ related. Bagram? I heard they got hit and that sucks. But that’s because we let this insurgency grow and grow to the point they hit the area of Kabul. When the eighty deuce had Khost they were all over the place, with a few exceptions. When you got infantry guys out on the road looking to kill shit, especially at night, the bad guys are nervous and do less things. OK yes they will stick stuff in the ground here and there, try to get us, but in the LONG RUN they do less, and there are less of them because it’s a way more dangerous job to be a taliban when the Americans are all over the place then it is when you got ‘em sittin on the fob all day watching movies, working out, shopping… We either got to fight this war right or go the f home. That means helping civilians (HA- humanitarian assistance) works great in the boondocks dudes. Yeah it’s risky, tell me about it. But you GOT to get out to those little villages. Or they think, and maybe they are right, that the Army (leadership) is afraid to fight, and that makes them bolder, and the cycle continues. Help the good people, kill the bad people, you don’t need a freakin manual, that’s your f-ing manual.