And I would say NATO is very suited for counterinsurgency: I’m convinced (but have yet to do research on the subject) that Canadian/British/German/Dutch Central/West Asian Muslims would give the Afghanistanis they interact with more peace of mind than Christians…throws the whole “crusade” propoganda out of whack, etc.

Having a pair of generals scheming their way into new stars back in the Pentagon at the expense of the man running the war may be normal, but that doesn’t make any less disappointing to see. As far as I’m concerned the continuity between McKiernan and McChrystal—right down to issuing the same directives and having the same ideas and requests—speaks to just how ridiculous this was. Just as McKiernan not getting the people he wanted because he didn’t have the right friends, but now McChrystal gets everything his heart desires (except maybe more troops).

Seriously? None of you think that’s a ridiculous double standard?

The issue about NATO is, to my mind, more worrying, but also less clear. There is an implicit rebuke of NATO in McChrystal’s appointment, and it goes against the meta-narrative of Barack Obama’s administration so far. I don’t know what it could mean yet, though.

To the extent that there is a degree of injustice over General McKiernan’s departure, it seems to me that it probably rests not so much in the fact that he was replaced as in the fact that he was sacked in an environment where large numbers of less capable officers over the last few years have been allowed to continue to advance up the career ladder regardless. In a way it’s sadly poetic that the same system that has allowed non-entities to advance up the ranks on the back of bureaucratic inertia resulted in General McKiernan being sacked because bureacratic imperatives meant that there was nowhere else in the career structure for him to go…

I agree with other commenters that the NATO issue probably deserves a greater prominence than you allow it. I can also understand the desire of those in Washington to get their very best people in place ASAP, regardless of the issue of a general’s ability to schmooze.

Yes, Gates/Mullen want Nagl types, but that’s because Nagl argues that success in counterinsurgency requires the creation of a learning organization that can reflexively adapt and learn from its mistakes. Your blog argues much the same point.

Lastly, NATO is simply not suited for counterinsurgency, and most of the Alliance doesn’t want to get its hands dirty (they want to do peacekeeping), save for the British, Aussies, Dutch, and Canadians. I imagine they see the ‘Americanization’ of the war as overdue, considering we’ve always seen it as a secondary theater. We’re the superpower, we always have to take the initial risks and NATO will then follow. Same thing happened in Bosnia in the 1990s.

Also, considering the environment in Afghanistan, must the world “politician” necessarily be preceded by “craven”? I guess you have little to no respect for those skills (Does Nagl rank up with McClellan for you, sheesh), but it seems that they’re even more important in this sort of a war. Diplomacy and War is full of stories of competent officials who were perceived to lack Washington’s full cachet, and were treated thusly when foreign powers dealt with them not as the real center of american power. It’s not fair to men serving underneath to suffer the consequences while a more diplomatic solution is hammered out.

There’s also hints of a disagreement between the Pentagon and McKeirnan on the proper place of NATO and how to organize ISAF, which seems like a serious issue, but the article doesn’t put enough meat on that to debate seriously.

As the pressure increases to show results in Afghanistan, senior DoD leaders seek generals with these essential and critical skills (it’s what they value). McKiernan just didn’t make the grade.

This is nothing new.