Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone reporter who published the story that was General Stanley McChrystal's undoing, describes the General as "brilliant." Among the General's "brilliant" observations: The presence of American soldiers in Afghanistan, and the Afghan casualties they cause, are fueling the insurgency. But what good are insights like these if you're not willing to draw the obvious conclusion?
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If you're familiar with General Stanley McChrystal's involvement in
covering
up the circumstances of Pat Tillman's death or the
increase in the number of Afghan civilians killed by U.S. forces
under his watch, you might have reacted as I did to the news of his
forced resignation: "Like convicting Al Capone of tax evasion," I
thought.
McChrystal, of course, was forced to resign after the
publication of
a report
quoting him and members of his staff making comments that were
disrespectful of civilian members of the Obama administration. Our
corporate media, with characteristic shallowness, has chosen to focus
on the most gossipy aspects of Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings'
picture of McChrystal and his inner circle, but Hastings goes much
farther than gossip, providing a devastating critique of McChrystal's
"Counter-Insurgency" doctrine, (or COIN, as insiders like to call it.)
McChrystal is (or was) the primary proponent of COIN, a doctrine that
emphasizes the role that civilian deaths play in generating support for
an insurgency. McChrystal describes this as "insurgent math - for
every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies."
The
idea that an occupying army generates its own resistance is one that
finds broad support among the peace movement, which draws the logical
conclusion that more soldiers = more killing = more resistance, and so
the proper number of U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan is zero. General
McCrystal, looking at the same equation, came up with 40,000 more
troops for Afghanistan, a number later reduced by President Obama to
30,000.
And that's the fascinating thing about General Stanley
McChrystal: An obviously intelligent man (Hastings preferred adjective
is "brilliant") who can assess a situation, be perfectly aware of all
of the side effects, drawbacks and pitfalls of what he his doing, and
still drive the car over the cliff.
Consider just one of
McCrystal's attempts to rewrite the equation to "more troops =
less
killing =
less resistance." Hastings reports that soldiers in
Afghanistan have been issued laminated cards with McChrystal's "rules
of engagement", intended to limit civilian casualties. Pfc. Jared
Pautsch shares this bit: "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably
certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,"
and then asks: "Does that make any f*cking sense?"
No, Private
Pautsch, it doesn't. But let's give credit where it's due: The
General's laminated cards are just an example of a brilliant man trying
to reconcile two irreconcilable facts, to create an occupying army
that is simultaneously There (because we need more troops to fight the
insurgency) and Not There (because more troops increases the
insurgency.) And if that still doesn't make any sense to you, then
you're just not as "brilliant" as General Stanley McChrystal.
This
belief that clever men can make 2 + 2 = 5 is shared by the man who
just fired General McChrystal. It was President Obama who gave
a
fine speech in Cairo explaining how American arrogance and
military adventurism has succeeded in alienating the Muslim world, and
then followed up with an
acceleration of American arrogance and
military adventurism, tripling the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan
and ramping up U.S. drone strikes on Pakistan.
This isn't the
blithe ignorance of President Bush, who would send our troops into
harms way with casual assurances that they will be greeted as
liberators. No, in President Obama and General McChrystal, we have men
who can describe in precise detail just how much hatred we will be
generating if we send in the troops - and then send in the troops
anyway. It turns out there's really not much difference - no difference
that matters, anyway - between the two approaches, either to the
troops or to the people whose country they are occupying.
In his
Rolling Stone report, Hastings captures this quality, shared by Obama
and McChrystal, when he describes the
West
Point speech in which Obama announced his plans to escalate the
war in Afghanistan:
On December
1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons
why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive;
we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap
American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to
Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words "victory" or "win," Obama
announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to
Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested.
In short: Here are the many reasons why escalating the war in
Afghanistan is a bad idea; and now I will escalate the war in
Afghanistan.
I've had enough of brilliant Generals (and brilliant
Presidents, for that matter.) It turns out there's one thing worse
than a leader that leads you steadily into disaster, and that's a
leader who leads you steadily into disaster while describing, in
abundant detail, just how disastrous things are going to be.
Speaking
for myself, all I want in a commanding General is a guy just
dim-witted enough to think the way out of Afghanistan might be under
that red, blinking sign marked "Exit."
Authors Website: www.wnpj.org
Authors Bio:Steve Burns is Program Director of Wisconsin Network of Peace a Justice, a coalition of more than 160 groups that work for peace, social justice and environmental sustainability.