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.

Comments

[Daniele]

General McKiernan's battlefield bona fides crttoibuned much to the success of Surge. Before that, General Mac oversaw the 2003 ground war against Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi regime as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He assumed command of NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan on June 3, last year. Most Army sources reveal that they were kinda stunned ala Star Trek when General McKiernan and his staff were not given command for post-war operations in Iraq, which instead went to V Corps and the newly-promoted Lt. General Ricardo Sanchez.He totally disagreed with General Franks about the Feyadeen. Franks dissed any threats from those guys. McKiernan wanted to hunt them down and kill them.As far as his getting sacked goes - the only reasons that come to light so far - and there will prob be way more come out about Def Sec Gates' decision to relieve him - is that supply and logistical endeavors had NOT gotten better to remote outposts as per Gates directive from his last visit (before this one)to Af Pak.