reflectivepundit

McChrystal Does Not Survive—Afghanistan War Strategy Does

By Brigitte L. Nacos

By removing General Stanley McChrystal as top commander in the Afghan theater of war and replacing him with General David Petraeus, President Barack Obama missed a golden opportunity to revise the losing Afghanistan strategy that transcends his declared goals of disrupting, dismantling and defeating Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Instead, the president said, “It is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy” as General Petraeus, Defense Secretary Gates, and Vice President Biden stood next to him.

Both Petraeus as commander in Iraq and McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan were eager to translate the so-called insurgency theory into practice—Petraeus once the troop surge was on the way in 2007 and McChrystal once Obama sided last December with his counterinsurgency strategy for Afghanistan combined with a troop surge of 30,000 that came on top of 21,000 additional troops he ordered in March 2009 to Kabul. 

Although the history of counterinsurgency campaigns is littered with failures and although the news from Afghanistan has been grim of late, the counterinsurgency strategy survives McChrystal perhaps in a more intense form under Petraeus.

Admittedly, General Petraeus had success in Iraq within a reasonable time span—but Afghanistan is a far cry from Iraq.

Typically, comprehensive counterinsurgency campaigns in failed states entail not only military and police action but also the building or rebuilding of political, civic, and economic institutions; this requires many years of hard and expensive efforts to have a chance to succeed. In short, this comes down to nation-building.

President Obama has not retreated from his promise begin withdrawing troops from Afghanistan in the middle of 2011. If he sticks with his Afghanistan strategy, he will have to change his time line for withdrawal drastically and budget many more $billions for this war.

By giving the command in Afghanistan to Petraeus, there seems no chance for Vice President Joe Biden to get another hearing for his 2009 recommendation of a limited objective in the region: Deploy a small number of Special Forces to attack and defeat the remnants of Al Qaeda in the mountainous Afghan-Pakistani border region as well as the Taliban leadership and hard-core followers.

On the other hand, the McChrystal scandal has drawn attention to the almost forgotten war and perhaps will now bolster the opposition to the Afghanistan strategy in the congress and the public.

General McChrystal: His Own Exit Strategy?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

If General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, does not resign before visiting the White House tomorrow, President Obama must fire him right then and there—or even before that. A commanding general who criticizes the president and his top military and civilian national security aides publicly in the midst of a war, can no longer be trusted to carry out the president’s war strategy that, ironically, was mostly designed by McChrystal himself. That’s precisely what McChrystal and his closest aides did as reported in Rolling Stone magazine. 

After they expressed contempt for literally everyone directly involved in national security matters as these relate to the conflict in Afghanistan in the presence of a Rolling Stone reporter, they did not try to retract or soften their remarks during the fact checking process.  Perhaps this indicates that McChrystal and Company have lost their sense of reality in the confines of their military in-circle or, more likely, that the general went rogue because his counterinsurgency strategy and tactics have not worked well at all since he took charge last year.

In an alarming part of the Rolling Stone revelations, McChrystal attacks the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, a retired three-star general and fellow West Pointer, by remarking, "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.' "

So, the general who wrote the script for succeeding in Afghanistan at last, ponders who will be blamed and who not “if we fail.” Does this point to McChrystal’s doubts about the outcome of the war? One wonders how the insurgents, most of all the Taliban, and the Afghan population react to this sort of talk—not to mention the impact of the revelation that deep divisions exist within America’s top military and civilian leadership.

Knowing full well the content of the article (headline “Runaway General”), McChrystal must have known its explosive impact. Which leads to my guess that going rogue was his exit strategy and a pass to blame others for the problems he leaves behind.

Whatever his motives, just as insubordination cost General Douglas MacArthur his job in 1951, when he was fired by President Truman, it must send McChrystal into retirement.

When the certified war hero MacArthur returned from the Far East, he received an enthusiastic homecoming with parades and other celebrations. However a retired McChrystal will be received in some quarters, he isn’t and will not be a MacArthur.

Afghanistan and Iraq: The Cost of the Forgotten Wars and Al Qaeda

By Brigitte L. Nacos

In a 2004 videotape message, Osama bin Laden boasted that it was easy to provoke the U.S., “lure it into perdition,” and inflict “human, financial, and political losses on America.” More importantly, he threatened that “[w]e are continuing to make America bleed to the point of bankruptcy, by God’s will.”

Certainly, the endless fight against bin Laden’s Al Qaeda, the terrorist group’s Taliban allies, and a host of other warlords of old and new jihadi cells has weakened America’s financial muscles. The fiscal situation of the United States has deteriorated in the years after the 9/11 attacks—in large part because of the horrendous costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While news of those two wars have all but disappeared from the front pages and seem of little interest to the American public, the total cost of the Iraq and Afghan wars have surpassed the $1 trillion mark and are rising steadily. According to a recent count by the National Priorities Project, “[t]o date, the total cost of war that has been allocated by Congress is $1.05 trillion, with $747to Iraq and $299 to Afghanistan.” But there is is now a reversal in the spending for the two wars in that more is spent for the Afghan war than for the Iraq deployment. As USA TODAY reported, “Pentagon spending in February [2010], the most recent month available, was $6.7 billion in Afghanistan compared with $5.5 billion in Iraq.” In other words, the two wars combined cost the American taxpayers $12.2 billion in one single month! 

The question is: for what?

Iraq, at least, seems to be at a stage that allows further troop withdrawal and disengagement—although there is hardly a day without lethal political violence somewhere in the country.

Afghanistan looks like a bottomless hole that swallows $billions and $billions without changes for the better. It was telling that U.S. Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the commander of U.S.-led international forces in Afghanistan, characterized the situation in the Afghan war as a draw between coalition forces and insurgents during an interview with Jeffrey Brown of PBS the other day. This is an excerpt from the transcript of that conversation on the PBS NewsHour:

Thoughts on the Failed Times Square Car-Bomb

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Color-Coded Terror Alerts: Since 9/11, the terrorism threat level of New York City has been orange for high. Obviously, there is no correlation between the alert status and the prevention of or preparedness for terrorist strikes. Yet, for whatever reason, the Department of Homeland Security has not gotten around to either drop or revamp the nonsensical, color-coded terrorism alert system that was put in place and exploited by the Bush administration to hype strategically timed threat alerts and thereby strengthen the president’s public approval . If it were strictly used to inform police departments and other agencies involved in terrorism prevention and preparedness, the system could have some value. But issuing such alerts for public consumption does not serve any purpose. After all, regular citizens do not have any idea what to do and what not to do when the threat assessment stands at one of five colors--green for low, blue for guarded, yellow for elevated, orange for high, and red for severe threat.

Fortunately, New York City’s Police Department has exemplary counterterrorism capabilities and, as the failed bombing demonstrated, post-incident investigative skills as well. Most important, this time around, the great degree of cooperation between often competing law enforcement agencies caught the would-be bomber in record time. Yes, the no-fly list needs changes assuring that new entries find their way immediately to airlines and all airport security stops--but nothing should overshadow the superb work of New York City police and FBI.

Former Governor Pataki’s wisdom: preventing terrorism is success. When asked during an appearance on Fox whether the failed bombing attempt could be seen as a victory, the former governor of New York, George Pataki, said, “I don’t think you call it victory. I think victory would be being able to prevent these before they get to that point where you have a loaded van in Times Square. I think it’s more a question of lucky.” Ah, well. Perhaps George Pataki, who is rumored to prepare for a presidential bid in 2012, forgot that he was the governor of New York—and his good friend Rudy Giuliani the mayor of New York City, when terrorists flew two airlines into the World Trade Center. I assume that success, according to his measuring stick, should have been their roles in prevention of the 9/11 attacks.  

However unsatisfied with what transpired at Times Square Pataki and other Republican critics may be, they surely know that not even the best laid counterterrorism plans will prevent all attempts to commit this sort of violence. Even Israel’s excellent terrorism prevention measures are not fool proof.

Virtual Recruitment and the Myth of the Lone Wolf Terrorist: Someone like Faisal Shahzad who tried to explode a home-made car-bomb at Times Square was more likely subject of virtual recruitment rather than old-fashioned personal enlistment. Reports that he listened to and read the extremist sermons of American-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi as he underwent a process of radicalization, are hardly surprising. After all, the shooting at Fort Hood last November was the work of  Nidal Hassan, an Army doctor, who was familiar with al-Aulaqui’s sermons and corresponded with the now resident of Yemen. In short, while Shahzad may have planned and carried out the bombing attempt all by himself, he was no lone wolf but rather inspired by others in the virtual community of hate and violence. This is not only true for extremist jihadis but literally all other religious and secular terrorists as well—here in the United States and around the world.

Moscow Suicide Bombings: Different than London, Madrid or 9/11?

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Seeing the horrific pictures of the Moscow underground bombings is remembering similar images of suicide terrorism against commuter systems in Madrid, London, New York/Washington, and elsewhere. If this week’s subway bombings had a particular shocking angle for Russians and people elsewhere, it was the fact that two women killed themselves at the heights of the morning rush hour in order to kill as many commuters as possible. Although female terrorists are far from being exceptions among terrorist groups of all stripes, they are still viewed differently than their male counterparts—as the exception to the rule. And that is precisely the reason why the leaders of terror groups recruit women for tactical reasons: Even the best security forces tend to be less suspicious of females than of males. That makes for a higher success rate of female terrorists.   

Given the greater shock associated with female terrorists, they and their deeds tend to receive extra media attention that the masterminds of terrorist spectacular crave. No wonder, then, that the lethal attacks in Moscow resulted also in mass-mediated speculations about these female bombers’ motives and, more generally, in explicit or implicit condemnation of the Russian government and perhaps even justification of terrorist violence in this context. 

In an op-ed article in the New York Times, Robert Pape of the University of Chicago and two of his students wrote the other day about the perpetrators of the incident:

“The bombers’ motives spring directly from their experiences with Russian troops, according to Abu al-Walid, a rebel leader who was killed in 2004. “These women, particularly the wives of the mujahedeen who were martyred, are being threatened in their homes, their honor [is] being threatened,” he explained in a video that appeared on Al Jazeera. “They do not accept being humiliated and living under occupation.”

In other words, using the justification of a late terrorist leader, these deadly terrorist attacks are the result of wrongheaded policies and actions of the Russian government and military. And this explanation is seen to transcend the particular case of Chechen women to cover Chechen terrorists—called rebels or separatists in most news accounts and opinion articles—and nationalists or separatists elsewhere who resort to terrorist means. According to the op-ed piece,

“As we have discovered in our research on Lebanon, the West Bank, Iraq, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka and elsewhere, suicide terrorist campaigns are almost always a last resort against foreign military occupation. Chechnya is a powerful demonstration of this phenomenon at work.”

In almost all of these cases, terrorist violence has been carried out in the name of religious martyrdom, mostly of the jihadist variety or--in the case of the Tamil Tigers in Sri Lanka--a pseudo-religion in the sect-like organization. When more secular oriented groups commit copy-cat suicide terrorism, this comes down to competition or out-bidding in a society with various terrorist groups as Mia Bloom explains well in her book “Dying to Kill.”

Republicans Try to Exploit Failed Attack by Underwear-Bomber

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Republicans did not lose time to attack President Obama and his administration after Umar Farouk Abdulmuttallab, a passenger on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit, tried to detonate PETN, a powerful plastic explosive he had hidden in his underpants.

To begin with, Representative Peter King and others criticized the president for not addressing the nation right after the failed attempt on Christmas Day. It is far from clear that this would have been the right move. Why add to the media hype and reward the masterminds of the latest terror plot with the highest level attention they crave? After all, the attempt failed. [As an aside, one wonders why the same people who are so eager to go public with their criticism of Obama remained silent, when President George W. Bush failed to pay attention to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina, a real catastrophe…]

More troubling are the Cheney-like voices who exploit the failed attempt by the would-be underwear bomber to intensify their attacks on the current administration’s counterterrorism policy. An editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal is a case in point. It calls Janet Napolitano “Secretary of Homeland Anxiety.” If anyone deserves this name, it is the first Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge who took his cue for raising the color-coded terror threat alerts from a White House that was aware that public fear of further terrorism increased the president’s approval ratings and his chances for reelection in 2004.  

As for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism efforts, they are mostly continuations of measures put in place in the more than seven post-9/11 years of the Bush administration. That is true for airport and aviation security as it is for the intelligence about possible terrorists in pertinent data bases. From what is known so far Abdulmuttallab’s name was on the list of persons with alleged connections to terrorists but not on the no-fly roster. Obviously, it does not make sense to have more than half-a-million names on a general list of somewhat suspect persons without checking that list constantly against important developments and new information—in this case the alarm triggered by the would-be bombers own father. Moreover, these lists should be shared with allies and equally vulnerable countries.

The Surge in Afghanistan: Consistent With Obama’s Campaign Speeches

By Brigitte L. Nacos

Tom Hayden, one of the most prominent leaders of the Anti-Vietnam Movement of the 1960s, wrote the other day in The Nation, “It's time to strip the Obama sticker off my car. Obama's escalation in Afghanistan is the last in a string of disappointments.” His sentiment is far from unique among Obama’s most enthusiastic supporters during the presidential campaign.

They either did not pay attention to candidate Obama’s stump speeches during the campaign or they did not want to hear and believe what their candidate said with respect to what he called “a war of necessity”—Afghanistan.  Otherwise, they couldn’t have been too surprised about the president’s finally revealed Afghanistan strategy.

On October 22, 2008, shortly before he won the presidential election, Barack Obama said in a speech in Richmond, Virginia, what he stated in earlier and later stump speeches: 

“Ending the [Iraq] war will help us deal with Afghanistan…In 2002, I said we should focus on finishing the fight against Osama bin Laden. Throughout this campaign, I have argued that we need more troops and more resources to win the war in Afghanistan, and to confront the growing threat from al Qaeda along the Pakistani border…”

“Make no mistake: we are confronting an urgent crisis in Afghanistan, and we have to act. It's time to heed the call from General McKiernan and others for more troops. That's why I'd send at least two or three additional combat brigades to Afghanistan. We also need more training for Afghan Security forces, more non-military assistance to help Afghans develop alternatives to poppy farming, more safeguards to prevent corruption, and a new effort to crack down on cross-border terrorism. Only a comprehensive strategy that prioritizes Afghanistan and the fight against al Qaeda will succeed, and that's the change I'll bring to the White House.”

So, the president decided to do what he said as candidate.

However, it is far from clear whether the positive results of the surge in Iraq can be repeated in Afghanistan by deploying 30,000 more troops there in addition to several thousand additional troops from a variety of other NATO members and the more than 20,000 U.S. soldiers already added on President Obama’s watch earlier this year. 

Playing Political Football with the Trial of 9/11 Plotters in New York

By Brigitte L. Nacos

More than eight years after the 9/11 attacks, more than six years after the breaking news of the 9/11 mastermind’s arrest, and after many years of secrecy, human rights violations, legal maneuvering, and inaction—most of it during George W. Bush’s presidency--, the Obama administration decided to try Khalid Sheik Mohammad and four others in a federal court in downtown Manhattan.

This seemed a logical choice. After all, Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the mastermind of the first World Trade Center Bombing in 1993, Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, one of the participants in a plot to bomb several Manhattan landmarks, and a number of other terrorists were tried, convicted and sentenced to life or long prison terms in the same court house without any problems.

Yet, Attorney-General Eric Holder’s announcement that the 9/11 plotters will be tried in a civil court in New York City rather than before military tribunal at Guantanamo was greeted with far louder opposition than support. Republicans were shameless in playing political football as they once again exploited the families of 9/11 victims for their partisan games.

As the Washington Post reported, before the attorney-general began his testimony before the Senate Judiciary, GOP Senators introduced “[m]ore than a dozen friends and relatives [that] had assembled in the Dirksen Senate Office Building on Wednesday morning to watch the hearing.” After the hearing ended, Holder met with families and friends of 9/11 victims and listened to their opposition to bring them to justice in a civil court. The Post described the meeting as an “encounter with grief-stricken relatives.”

While one certainly sympathizes with the emotions of relatives and friends of 9/11 victims, eight years after the terrorist attacks politicians and reporters should stop dramatizing and amplifying the emotional plight of these families as if it were forever unique to this particular group of people.   

What Endgame in Afghanistan?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
President Barack Obama has differentiated between a war of choice in Iraq and a war of necessity in Afghanistan. As he ponders whether and how many additional troops to send to Afghanistan, he has yet to reveal the objectives of the present NATO forces and the expected troop surge to an increasingly skeptical American public. Indeed, recent opinion polls show that a plurality of Americans wants a reduction in present troop levels, not an increase. The same is true for some prominent voices and unlikely bedfellows to the right (i.e., columnist George Will) and to the left (i.e., Senator Russ Feingold).

After his recent trip to Afghanistan, Senator Lindsay Graham said according to today’s New York Times that Afghanistan is the country “where 9/11 was planned and executed.” And he advised the president to explain more convincingly “the consequences of Afghanistan being lost and becoming a safe haven for Al Qaeda.” Those are as valid arguments today as they were right after 9/11. Then the objective was to vanquish the leadership of Al Qaeda Central and of their Taliban allies and thereby remove the terrorist threat posed by Osama bin Laden and his directorate.

Although the Bush administration claimed victory after destroying Al Qaeda’s headquarters and camps and chasing Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into Pakistan to the almost unanimous applause at home, bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and their circles were alive and well across the border—and still are. As to the real reason for going to war in Afghanistan, the allegedly highly successful intervention was a failure.  
Obama was right, when he criticized his predecessor during the campaign for rushing into a war of choice in Iraq instead of concentrating on the war of necessity against Al Qaeda.

The recently stepped up use of special commandos and un-manned drones to target Al Qaeda and the Taliban in their Pakistani hiding places was a right decision and has achieved some success. This is the way to go. Pour more resources in fighting and defeating Al Qaeda Central for good, the real threat to the security of the U.S. and its allies. That was the objective in the fall of 2001and that should be the objective today.

What to Make of Hero's Welcome for Pan Am Flight 103 Terrorist?

By Brigitte L. Nacos
In my mind, the intentional detonation of a bomb aboard Pan Am Flight 103 in December 1988 and the killing of 270 persons aboard and on the ground in Lockerbie, Scotland, marked the beginning of the age of catastrophic terrorism. 

Now, Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahithe only person convicted for mass murder was released by Scottish authorities on "compassionate" grounds so that he can die at home in Libya surrounded by his family.
No wonder, that the families of the victims are outraged. They did not even have a chance to say good-bye to their loved ones beforeFlight 103 was blown out of the sky and disintegrated into billions of pieces. 

Terrorists are not in the business of compassion. They hate and kill indiscriminately.  

But even more troubling than the decision to free al-Megrahithe's release are the incredible images of the hero's welcome that was staged in Tripoli for the Lockerbie terrorist. There is no doubt that Gadhafi arranged for his son Saif al-Islam el-Qaddafi to bring the former agent home aboard a government plane and orchestrated the glorious homecoming.

If Gadhafi intends to tell the world that the festive reception was for a man wrongly blamed for the downing of Flight 103, he will not convince those governments and peoples that matter. The released Libyan was not used as a scapegoat by the United States and other western countries to highlight Libya's state sponsorship of terrorism, but was actually a victim of Gadhafi without whom no Libyan agent would have plotted the horrific terrorist strike. 

The fact that Gadhafi staged the homecoming celebration for al-Megrahithe in defiance of contrary advice by Scottish and other Western authorities raises new doubts about his sincerety, when it comes to his swearing off support for terrorism and the abondonment of WMD-programs. 

Signaling different behavior in the post-9/11 years, Gadhafi was rewarded in that Libya returned into the family of nations and was taken off the U.S. State Department's lists of state sponsors of terrorism that results in a host of sanctions.

Now, Gadhafi, acted once again like the leader of a rogue state.