by Eric Martin
In a somewhat brazen fashion, General McChrystal and some of his top aides have taken to the pages of Rolling Stone to air out political differences with some top administration officials, and the story, is rightly, generating quite a bit of controversey. In the Rolling Stone piece, McChrystal and his team level some harsh (and pointed) criticisms at Vice President Biden, National Security Advisor Gen. Jim Jones, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry and even President Obama himself.
I tend to agree with Gregg Carlstrom when he says that the actual criticisms (if a bit on the disrespectful and, at times, childish side) are not really all that surprising. The underlying tensions and policy differences are well known - even if a public airing in such a fashion is a bit jarring. But even then, as Carlstrom argues, this is well within McChrystal's modus operandi:
I will say that his direct attacks on Biden and Eikenberry concern me less than his political maneuvering. The profile reinforces the perception that McChrystal is a deeply political animal, determined to push his own policy rather than follow what's handed down from above.
I don't want to sound naive, because clearly war has a political dimension. But this profile fits the pattern established with McChrystal's London speech in October and the leaking of his strategy review: he's determined to push the administration into a corner on Afghanistan strategy. Whether or not this fits the legal definition of insubordination -- McChrystal is overstepping his boundaries vis-a-vis civil-military relations.
Near the end of the article, an unnamed "senior military official" speculates that McChrystal might ask for another troop surge next summer (instead of the drawdown promised by President Obama).
But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says.
Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.
This again fits a pattern: The civilian leadership in the White House has repeatedly insisted that the July 2011 withdrawal date is a "firm" one. The military clearly doesn't think much of that deadline, and it's trying to push an alternative.
There are a few moving parts at play here. On the one hand, Obama established a timeline for beginning troop withdrawals from Afghanistan during the review process and asked his military people to offer strategies to fit that timeline. General McChrystal and others offered a COIN-type strategy that they claimed would work within those parameters.
Some influential policy makers, like Ambassador Eikenberry (and lowly bloggers such as myself), made the argument that there was very little chance the McChrystal plan would work, and that an 18 month turnaround employing COIN in Afghanistan (heck, a 180 month turn around employing COIN) was highly unlikely. After all, if you read the proponents of COIN themselves, who were talking a 10-15 year timelines, maybe longer, pessimism about a 1.5 year COIN horizon seemed like a no-brainer.
Nevertheless, McChrystal insisted he could get the job done within that timeframe. Marc Ambinder gives a decent sketch of this process:
During the strategy review, Eikenberry didn't think McChrystal's surge could work. He told the White House that contractors would have to pick up the slack for years to come. McChrystal insisted that he could execute his COIN strategy with a heavy presence of special operations forces ... and be out in 18 months (i.e, troops would begin to be drawn down). The White House ultimately sided with McChrystal.
Some would argue that McChrystal knew all along that he wouldn't be able to achieve the desired results in 18 months, and that he figured he could lean on Obama to extend the timeline as needed (one would have to imagine that such extensions would stretch into the next administration, even if Obama served the full 8 years). Perhaps so, perhaps not, but in either instance, now that Eikenberry's assessment has been vindicated, McChrystal's team is attempting a political end around that serves multiple purposes.
If the political gambit is successful, McChrystal would get his extra rope with which to tie us up further in Central Asia. If not, McChrystal will be able to frame the failure of his strategy as a case of leaders in Washington failing him, not the other way around.
The recent complaints about the constraints that the timeline is putting on military forces that were leaked to other news sources is clearly a part of this political maneuvering, and concomitant attempt to apportion blame and massage the historical record. As Michael Cohen argues, such complaints are just as disingenuous as the McChrystal-faction's Rolling Stone whinges when originating from a military brass that insisted that the timeframe was not a problem beforehand.
Either they weren't being honest then, or they were simply wrong about what they could achieve. But they knew the rules of the engagement, and they are vastly overstepping their proper authority in attempting to hijack the political process in such a fashion.
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