Kaplan has some subtle yet fierce criticism of and advice for President Obama’s handling of foreign affairs and his strategy in Afghanistan. Normally, I would try and abridge the whole article, but it is so complete, with every sentence having meaning, that it’s almost impossible to summarize. I include about half of the article below, and I’d encourage you to read the rest, and comment on the substance.
It’s perfectly legitimate for Obama to review Afghanistan strategy and troop numbers. But by calling into question the very strategy that he put into place earlier in the year, when he called Afghanistan the “necessary war” and promised to properly resource it, Obama is courting charges from the right that he is another ineffectual Jimmy Carter—that other Nobel Peace Prize winner…In this highly networked media age you only get to fire a general once. It’s not like the Civil War era, when Abraham Lincoln could quietly relieve one commander after another until he found Ulysses Grant.
In May, the Obama administration fired Army Gen. David McKiernan, then the commander in Afghanistan, in a particularly humiliating manner. McKiernan wasn’t a failed general; he simply wasn’t the best man for the job. Yet he’ll forever be known as the first wartime commander to have been relieved of his duties since President Harry S. Truman fired Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Korea.
The administration chose Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal to take McKiernan’s place. It was during the selection process for the new general that a policy review would have made sense—though only behind closed doors. And the time to roll out a new or adjusted strategy would have been when McChrystal’s selection was announced, so that he could become the face of the new policy.
The administration had many months, beginning the moment Obama was elected, to recalibrate Afghan strategy. Yet it’s now in the position of publicly questioning the fundamental wisdom of the general it has chosen. The position that Obama is now in is similar to that of former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld some years back—appearing not to be listening to his generals. If the president doesn’t agree with his field commander, that’s fine. Just don’t make a public spectacle of it.
Even if Obama does end up making the correct decision on Afghanistan strategy (by which I mean adding troops, since counterinsurgency is manpower-intensive), the public agony over his deliberations already may have done incalculable damage.
I can only quote so much—I highly recommend reading the complete article here.
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Comments to this entry
tdaxp
November 1, 2009
12:22 pm
Eddie
November 1, 2009
2:22 pm
We should not send our soldiers to fight and die for a corrupt, failing government. We should not spend hundreds of billions on it either.
ElamBend
November 1, 2009
4:44 pm
The last administration was complaining about Karzai, and Abdullah is not a choir boy.
This administration appears to be looking for a way to split the baby and is creating the appearance of indecision. If the President has come to the conclusion that the war is not the vital war he had earlier described it as, he should had the courage of his convictions and push it. Tom Ricks, no GW Bush fan at all, said the big thing that Bush did right was allow the changes that lead to the tactical changes known as the surge and then let them take hold.
So far, we haven't seen any sort of that intestinal fortitude from this administration.
PS - I have one quibble about Kaplans description of Lincoln 'quietly firing' generals. It was much more of a political pressure cooker than that and Gen. McClellan was more than open about his strategic disagreements with the CinC, downright insubordinate and was in fact the Democrat candidate against Lincoln.
bobby
November 1, 2009
5:13 pm
Obama knew any decision he made would hurt Democrats election chances.
No troops=enraged Republicans.
Full troops =angry Lefties (suppresses votes)
MyChrystal Lite (AKA -- the Obama Weasel Option) = enrage Repubs+ angry Lefties.
Obama's reasons for waffling and waiting are as transparent as his lies. The man is soulless.
Eddie
November 1, 2009
6:48 pm
Its much more than complaining about him being ineffective or incompetent. Karzai is illegitimate in the eyes of many Afghans. That bleeds into support for the US mission there and drives people to support or at least tolerate the Taliban and other warlords in their respective province.
I would compare him more to Musharraf in '07, where the mask was off and people began to tolerate and support violent anti-government elements to a degree much greater than before.
Also, Bush didn't decide to let a few generals run with a bold idea. He had no other choice, having lost Congress and faith in his Defense Secretary, and fought a losing war incompetently for four years almost up to that point. He GAVE responsibility and power to the COIN folks and basically told the country he was out of the decision-making process, instead just rubber-stamping whatever the COIN forces needed, because he had no credibility left with the American people.
ElamBend
November 1, 2009
7:18 pm
Bush giving those few people the power to reshape strategy was a sharp break with his previous years of rewarding loyalty above competence. Doing so was not fait accompli, there were any number of try to muddle through or kick-the-can down the road approaches he could have taken. Plus, he had to knock some people aside, people who had been loyal, to give the COINistas control.
McKellar
November 1, 2009
7:28 pm
Remember how we defeated the Taliban in the first place? With small numbers of special forces, working closely with local troops. The Taliban only have power as long as they're fighting Imperialist invaders. So don't give them a huge army to take potshots at. Put CAP's in the villages, and air-mobile strike forces just over the horizon. Meanwhile you let the Afghans choose their own leaders without playing kingmaker. Don't make Kabul and Kandahar into American-run cantons, like we did with Saigon.
I don't the details of the plan McCrystal presented to Obama, or how he defended it, but I know we should be smart enough to figure out a better solution.
M Brueschke
November 1, 2009
7:31 pm
Kaplan wrote against that zerg/big forces approach to COIN in Imperial Grunts, he railed against the large bases in Afghanistan and said less is more.
McKellar
November 1, 2009
7:42 pm
Munro Ferguson
November 1, 2009
8:18 pm
SJPONeill
November 1, 2009
9:27 pm
Decide up front what you are trying to acheive - what is the desired endstate that will determine campaign success and initiate the exit plan? Identify what tripwires might initiate the exit plan short of campaign success and mitigate them. Think outside the conventional paradigm - Google for MAJ Josh Wineera and Interbella. (Search tip as above...don't know what I mean - try the same search for Interbella in Google and Bing - note the differences in results...)
"When you broke in here, did you have a plan for getting out?" Princess Leia - Star Wars. The first principle of ANY war of choice is develop your plan for getting out hand in hand with your plan for getting in.
While COIN may be people-intensive, it is no more so than other forms of war - look at the size of the forces arrayed for decades during the Cold War. The key to COIN is identifying and addressing the core issues of the campaign. Killing bad guys is not a core issue - unless you are fairly confident that there is a finite supply of bad guys and then an attritive apporach MAY work.
Do not fall into the trap of thinking that campaign success will come from inflicting your own culture onto the host nation as a/the 'solution'. We have fought wars against those who would do this to others...
Chief Wiggum
November 2, 2009
11:48 am
http://www.newsweek.com/id/216704
Excerpts:
"The request for additional forces by the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, poses cruel dilemmas for President Obama. If he refuses the recommendation and General McChrystal's argument that his forces are inadequate for the mission, Obama will be blamed for the dramatic consequences. If he accepts the recommendation, his opponents may come to describe it, at least in part, as Obama's war. If he compromises, he may fall between all stools—too little to make progress, too much to still controversy. And he must make the choice on the basis of assessments he cannot prove when he makes them.
"This is the inextricable anguish of the presidency, for which Obama is entitled to respect from every side of the debate. Full disclosure compels me to state at the beginning that I favor fulfilling the commander's request and a modification of the strategy. But I also hope that the debate ahead of us avoids the demoralizing trajectory that characterized the previous controversies in wars against adversaries using guerrilla tactics, especially Vietnam and Iraq.
"Each of those wars began with widespread public support. Each developed into a stalemate, in part because the strategy of guerrillas generally aims at psychological exhaustion. Stalemate triggered a debate about the winnability of the war. A significant segment of the public grew disenchanted and started questioning the moral basis of the conflict. Inexorably, the demand arose for an exit strategy with an emphasis on exit and not strategy.
"The prevailing strategy in Afghanistan is based on the classic anti-insurrection doctrine: to build a central government, commit it to the improvement of the lives of its people, and then protect the population until that government's own forces are able, with our training, to take over. The request for more forces by General McChrystal states explicitly that his existing forces are inadequate for this mission, implying three options: to continue the present deployment and abandon the McChrystal strategy; to decrease the present deployment with a new strategy; or to increase the existing deployment with a strategy focused on the security of the population. A decision not to increase current force levels involves, at a minimum, abandoning the strategy proposed by General McChrystal and endorsed by Gen. David Petraeus; it would be widely interpreted as the first step toward withdrawal. The second option—offered as an alternative—would shrink the current mission by focusing on counter-terrorism rather than counter-insurgency. The argument would be that the overriding American strategic objective in Afghanistan is to prevent the country from turning once again into a base for international terrorism. Hence the defeat of Al Qaeda and radical Islamic jihad should be the dominant priority. Since the Taliban, according to this view, is a local, not a global, threat, it can be relegated to being a secondary target. A negotiation with the group might isolate Al Qaeda and lead to its defeat, in return for not challenging the Taliban in the governance of Afghanistan. After all, it was the Taliban which provided bases for Al Qaeda in the first place.
"This theory seems to me to be too clever by half. Al Qaeda and the Taliban are unlikely to be able to be separated so neatly geographically. It would also imply the partition of Afghanistan along functional lines, for it is highly improbable that the civic actions on which our policies are based could be carried out in areas controlled by the Taliban. Even so-called realists—like me—would gag at a tacit U.S. cooperation with the Taliban in the governance of Afghanistan."
Michael F
November 2, 2009
2:31 pm
wufiavelli
November 2, 2009
6:03 pm
Rory Stewart does not think we have the political will for this. He thinks we should stick to counter terrorism. He has a good knowledge and background on the matter.
Also another interesting fact, 90% or something like that of Afghanistan Rural. Not to mention the entire social order of things is F'ed up. That is not an easy population to protect. Seems like it could get extremely messy trying to work with that stat.
SJPONeill
November 2, 2009
8:34 pm
McKellar
November 2, 2009
9:07 pm