McChrystal Is Summoned to Washington Over Remarks

[RandomGuy]

That's rather vague.

Potential and almost certain bad outcomes:

Taliban sweeps back into power, providing easy access to training camps for potential al Qaeda militant operatives.

Skeptics of US policies and willingness to "tough it out" are vindicated, decreasing the amount of cooperation we get in many areas, because we have proven, yet again, that we will cut and run when things get mildly difficult.

Al Qaeda will, in essence, claim victory, and they will be right. This will make it much easier for them to convince others to join their cause.

Those are the direct, first order results. I would not even care to guess at a lot of the second + order results.

[RandomGuy]

Funny, I just got done reading the RS article.

If you had read it, I dont think you would come away with the above stated opinion.

McCrystal fancies himself a cowboy. He, his aides, his staff and even his soldiers know there is no "winning" Afghanistan.

Read the article. He can apologize for it now, but you are right on one point, he shouldnt be. One in a position of power should never have to apologize for their decisions, unless of course you knew the decision was a bad one to begin with. Needless to point out what that suggests, no?

Hmm didn't see a link in my brief bit here.

The Runaway General

Just so that those of us not too lazy to actually read it have a link.

[z0sa]

Potential and almost certain bad outcomes:

Taliban sweeps back into power, providing easy access to training camps for potential al Qaeda militant operatives.

Skeptics of US policies and willingness to "tough it out" are vindicated, decreasing the amount of cooperation we get in many areas, because we have proven, yet again, that we will cut and run when things get mildly difficult.

Al Qaeda will, in essence, claim victory, and they will be right. This will make it much easier for them to convince others to join their cause.

Those are the direct, first order results. I would not even care to guess at a lot of the second + order results.

I agree on all points.

Problem is, no one wants to stay there for 20-40 years, or however long it is necessary to be assured the Taliban are gone for good. The homeland is in economic decay and it's simply illogical to keep fighting these wars in the name of democracy/preventing terrorism/whatever. "We" (our civilian and military leaders) have only ourselves to blame for once again, putting us in a tough situation with no legitimate exit strategy.

I still have hope. 150,000 Allied troops in Afghanistan and just over 12 months til the first large-scale departures begin. It'll be an interesting year for the theater, that's for sure.

[RandomGuy]

This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we've backed – a danger that Eikenberry explicitly warned about in his cable. Even Team McChrystal privately acknowledges that Karzai is a less-than-ideal partner. "He's been locked up in his palace the past year," laments one of the general's top advisers. At times, Karzai himself has actively undermined McChrystal's desire to put him in charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Karzai met three U.S. soldiers who had been wounded in Uruzgan province. "General," he called out to McChrystal, "I didn't even know we were fighting in Uruzgan!"

I used to admire Karzai. That has changed.

[RandomGuy]

I agree on all points.

Problem is, no one wants to stay there for 20-40 years, or however long it is necessary to be assured the Taliban are gone for good. The homeland is in economic decay and it's simply illogical to keep fighting these wars in the name of democracy/preventing terrorism/whatever. "We" (our civilian and military leaders) have only ourselves to blame for once again, putting us in an tough situation with no legitimate exit strategy.

It is highly logical to be there.

Read up on the following book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map

If you want to tap into the mind of the junior officers that are coming into the O6+ ranks (Col/general/admiral+), learn what this guy is saying.

I caught the briefing he gives on CSPAN one day, and it astonishingly perfectly put into words and solid concepts things that I had vaguely formed for years, but never bothered to sit down and outline.

Mr. Barnett pretty much has the ear of the pentagon and is pivotal in forming a lot of thinking of up and coming leaders.

He is also pretty much spot on. The danger to the US is not from developed nations, it comes from the Gap that he talks about.

We need a different army and are slowly shaping that into one more capable of handling the types of wars we actually end up fighting, as opposed to the WW2/Cold War era nation-to-nation mindset that is the definition of starting the next war with the army from the last one.

[clambake]

bush also fired shinseki.

[RandomGuy]

Key ideas:

1.Systems of rules called Rule-sets reduce violent conflict. Violence decreases as rules are established (e.g., the WTO Dispute Settlement Understanding) for dealing with international conflicts.
2.The world can be roughly divided into two groups: the Functioning Core, characterized by economic interdependence, and the Non-Integrated Gap, characterized by unstable leadership and absence from international trade. The Core can be sub-divided into Old Core (North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia) and New Core (China, India). The Disconnected Gap includes the Middle East, South Asia (except India), most of Africa, Southeast Asia, and northwest South America.
3.Integration of the Gap countries into the global economy will provide opportunities for individuals living in the Gap to improve their lives, thereby presenting a desirable alternative to violence and terrorism. The US military is the only force capable of providing the military support to facilitate this integration by serving as the last ditch rule-enforcer. Barnett argues that it has been doing so for over 20 years by "exporting" security (US spends about half of the world's total in military spending).
4.To be successful the US military must stop thinking of war in the context of war but war in the context of "everything else", i.e. demographics, energy, investment, security, politics, trade, immigration, etc.
5.In recognition of its dual role, the US military should organize itself according to two functions, the "Leviathan" and the "System Administrator."
Leviathan's purpose is the use of overwhelming force in order to end violence quickly. It will take out governments, defend Core countries, and generally do the deterrence work that the US military has been doing since the end of WWII. The Leviathan force is primarily staffed by young aggressive personnel and is overwhelmingly American.
The SysAdmin's purpose is to wage peace: peacekeeping, nation building, strengthening weak governments, etc. The SysAdmin force is primarily staffed by older, more experienced personnel, though not entirely (he would put the Marines in SysAdmin as the " Mini-me Leviathan"). The sys Admin force would work best as a Core-wide phenomenon.
6.By exporting security, the US and the rest of the Core benefit from increased trade, increased international investment, and other benefits.

[RandomGuy]

By some accounts, McChrystal's career should have been over at least two times by now. As Pentagon spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more like a White House mouthpiece than an up-and-coming commander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous "stuff happens" remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChrystal backed him up. A few days later, he echoed the president's Mission Accomplished gaffe by insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over. But it was during his next stint – overseeing the military's most elite units, including the Rangers, Navy Seals and Delta Force – that McChrystal took part in a cover-up that would have destroyed the career of a lesser man.

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the cir stances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.

"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

Two years later, in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud. McChrystal was not disciplined in the scandal, even though an interrogator at the camp reported seeing him inspect the prison multiple times. But the experience was so unsettling to McChrystal that he tried to prevent detainee operations from being placed under his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a "political swamp," according to a U.S. official. In May 2009, as McChrystal prepared for his confirmation hearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions about Camp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But the scandals barely made a ripple in Congress, and McChrystal was soon on his way back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan.

The media, to a large extent, have also given McChrystal a pass on both controversies. Where Gen. Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher's pet with a Ranger's tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a "Jedi" commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn't care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. ("There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.") He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. "The ing lads love Stan McChrystal," says a British officer who serves in Kabul. "You'd be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like 'Who the is that?' And it's ing Stan McChrystal."

(from page 3 on website) http://www.rollingstone.com/politics...RS_show_page=3

Interesting article.

[z0sa]

It is highly logical to be there.

Perhaps that was the wrong wording; what I mean is, it's illogical to stay if the majority of Americans don't think it's necessary. Is the Taliban planning on invading the USA, or even Iraq if they regain power? It might seem necessary to stick it out but I don't think it is. We'll never crush out the terrorists for good, ever.

Long story short, I don't think we have the money, political will, or public desire to be there for 20-40 years.

Read up on the following book:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Pentagon's_New_Map

If you want to tap into the mind of the junior officers that are coming into the O6+ ranks (Col/general/admiral+), learn what this guy is saying.

I caught the briefing he gives on CSPAN one day, and it astonishingly perfectly put into words and solid concepts things that I had vaguely formed for years, but never bothered to sit down and outline.

Mr. Barnett pretty much has the ear of the pentagon and is pivotal in forming a lot of thinking of up and coming leaders.

He is also pretty much spot on. The danger to the US is not from developed nations, it comes from the Gap that he talks about.

We need a different army and are slowly shaping that into one more capable of handling the types of wars we actually end up fighting, as opposed to the WW2/Cold War era nation-to-nation mindset that is the definition of starting the next war with the army from the last one.

I will definitely look into it. Thanks for the suggestion. And I agree it's time to change the way we wage war. I think Patraeus and others are on the road to doing just that.

[EVAY]

Potential and almost certain bad outcomes:

Taliban sweeps back into power, providing easy access to training camps for potential al Qaeda militant operatives.

Skeptics of US policies and willingness to "tough it out" are vindicated, decreasing the amount of cooperation we get in many areas, because we have proven, yet again, that we will cut and run when things get mildly difficult.

Al Qaeda will, in essence, claim victory, and they will be right. This will make it much easier for them to convince others to join their cause.

Those are the direct, first order results. I would not even care to guess at a lot of the second + order results.

I think this is, unfortunately, right on.

I hate it, but I think we have to stay there for a while...

but I keep remembering that "Afghanistan is where empires go to die".

[EVAY]

Truly a situation where there are no good alternatives, but some alternatives (like taking off right now or in 6 months or so) are clearly worse than others.

[EVAY]

Truly a situation where there are no good alternatives, but some alternatives (like taking off right now or in 6 months or so) are clearly worse than others.

I absolutely hate having to admit that.

[CosmicCowboy]

Afghanistan is a stone age country ruled by tribal chiefs that switch sides at will. They admire strength as long as you don't with their little local power game. Start pussing out trying to avoid conflict, and let the Taliban back in unmolested to choose where/when they hit you and you not only lose casualties you lose the confidence of the tribal chiefs. They are a brutal people. You have to show strength and resolve or you are ed.

[RandomGuy]

Afghanistan is a stone age country ruled by tribal chiefs that switch sides at will. They admire strength as long as you don't with their little local power game. Start pussing out trying to avoid conflict, and let the Taliban back in unmolested to choose where/when they hit you and you not only lose casualties you lose the confidence of the tribal chiefs. They are a brutal people. You have to show strength and resolve or you are ed.

The Soviets showed plenty. They failed.

Have you actually read the counter insurgency manual?

[CosmicCowboy]

Correction. Afghanistan isn't even a country. They don't and never have accepted a centralized government. The concept is totally foreign to them. It's ing indian territory and they are some tough bas s.

[ChumpDumper]

The Soviets showed plenty. They failed.

Have you actually read the counter insurgency manual?

He doesn't know what the term means.

[CosmicCowboy]

The Soviets showed plenty. They failed.

Have you actually read the counter insurgency manual?

They admire strength, not stupidity. The Russians occupied the cities and raided the countryside and planted a bazillion landmines blowing up and maiming a ton of locals. That pissed off the tribal chiefs which made it fertile ground for the Taliban after the CIA/US split after the Russians got their ass kicked.

[RandomGuy]

They admire strength, not stupidity. The Russians occupied the cities and raided the countryside and planted a bazillion landmines blowing up and maiming a ton of locals. That pissed off the tribal chiefs which made it fertile ground for the Taliban after the CIA/US split after the Russians got their ass kicked.

...so, you haven't read the counterinsurgency manual?

[RandomGuy]

He doesn't know what the term means.

Field Manual 3-24 in pdf format

282 pages that summarizes everything learned from counterinsurgency, esp. by the US military in Vietnam.

Yes, I have read the whole thing. Good reading, and I would recommend that anybody who wants to have an informed opinion on Afghanistan do the same, for reasons stated previously.

[CosmicCowboy]

...so, you haven't read the counterinsurgency manual?

Sorry, I actually have a job and have not read the counterinsurgency manual cover to cover but understand the highlights.

Meanwhile, Are you ing stupid? Do you not know how this mess started? The US armed and trained the ing Taliban with the goal of defeating the evil USSR empire. Yeah, we knew they were religious fanatics but they were stone cold killers and thats what we needed, not a bunch of farmers. Well, when the USSR left Afghanistan we did too, and left the general population to the mercy of the Taliban instead of staying there and nation building while we had a chance. Thank you very much Bill Clinton. Now, we reap what we sowed.

[MannyIsGod]

You think RG doesn't work? You and moan here on a daily basis and you can't find time to read 282 pages because YOU HAVE A JOB? And then you have the nerve to ask the guy who's obviously gone out of his way WHILE HAVING A JOB to inform himself if he's stupid?

Amazing.

282 pages? THAT I HAVE A JOB.

[word]

http://weaselzippers.us/

[CosmicCowboy]

You think RG doesn't work? You and moan here on a daily basis and you can't find time to read 282 pages because YOU HAVE A JOB? And then you have the nerve to ask the guy who's obviously gone out of his way WHILE HAVING A JOB to inform himself if he's stupid?

Amazing.

282 pages? THAT I HAVE A JOB.

Your ing President and Attorney ing General couldn't read a THIRTEEN PAGE Arizona law either.

you Manny.

He gave me the link and I will probably read the full text. as I said, I've read the highlights.

Your jealousy/penis envy when I post continues to crack me up.

ing Loser. Bite Me.

[ChuckD]

Sorry, I actually have a job and have not read the counterinsurgency manual cover to cover but understand the highlights.

Meanwhile, Are you ing stupid? Do you not know how this mess started? The US armed and trained the ing Taliban with the goal of defeating the evil USSR empire. Yeah, we knew they were religious fanatics but they were stone cold killers and thats what we needed, not a bunch of farmers. Well, when the USSR left Afghanistan we did too, and left the general population to the mercy of the Taliban instead of staying there and nation building while we had a chance. Thank you very much Bill Clinton. Now, we reap what we sowed.

Don't expect Clinton to clean up your boy Bush I's messes. He didn't sell them that . He also makes your boy Bush II look like the re he is by NOT getting involved in a land war in Asia, let alone doubling down with two.

[Yonivore]

So, let me see if I've got this straight...

President Obama accepted the resignation of his hand-picked general to lead the effort in Afghanistan and replaced him with a general he had no confidence in, just 3 years ago?



One wonders if MoveOn.org and MSNBC's Keith Olbermann will reprise their General BetrayUs chanting...

I can only conclude Petraeus took the job out of a sense of patriotism and devotion to his men and not out of any sense of duty to the President. Unlike McChrystal, however, I bet Petraeus can keep his personal views of the Commander-in-Chief to himself.

By the way, if Petraeus pulls Afghanistan out of the fire, it will -- once again -- vindicate the judgement of Obama's predecessor. Not that it will be acknowledged by anyone.