I hate to say it, but this just seems absurdly stupid to me:
On Thursday, during a visit to NATO headquarters here, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal admitted that preparations for perhaps the most critical operation of the war — the campaign to take control of Kandahar, the Taliban’s birthplace — weren’t going as planned. He said winning support from local leaders, some of whom see the Taliban fighters not as oppressors but as their Muslim brothers, was proving tougher than expected. The military side of the campaign, originally scheduled to surge in June and finish by August, is now likely to extend into the fall.
“I don’t intend to hurry it,” McChrystal told reporters traveling with Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates. “It will take a number of months for this to play out. But I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. It’s more important we get it right than we get it fast.”
But McChrystal does not have time on his side. The day before he revealed the Kandahar delay, his boss, Gates, said that the U.S.-led coalition has until the end of the year to show progress in the war and prove to the United States and its allies that their forces have broken a stalemate with the Taliban.
“All of us, for our publics, are going to have to show by the end of the year that our strategy is on the right track and making some headway,” Gates said Wednesday during a visit to London to meet with British leaders.
McChrystal said he was confident that his counterinsurgency strategy was bearing fruit and that he would be in position to demonstrate that by year’s end. “The perception that the insurgency has momentum is reversing,” he said. “Progress won’t show every day, but it will show over time.”
…But McChrystal said it was taking longer than expected to gain the blessing of local tribal leaders — and Kandaharis in general — for the operation. He also said commanders needed more time to ensure that the Afghan government could step in after the fighting stops and provide effective public services, which Kandahar has lacked for years.
“When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them,” McChrystal told reporters. “It’s a deliberate process. It takes time to convince people.”
I mean, you go to a guy and you say, “sometime in the next few months, we’re going blow your city to shit. We just want to see if you’ll sign off on that. So, is that cool? Do you have any concerns?”
And you top it off by telling them you’ll be bringing in Karzai’s people to run things.
”…we must show progress by the end of the year.”
I can’t believe the military, once again, gets off the hook by simply applying ”The Friedman Unit” principle. As Einstein stated, the definition of insanity is repeating the same thing over and over again expecting a different result. Any sane person would have to admit that, after nine years, we have made zero progress in this war.
For God’s sake, where is the outcry from the American people and our Democratic leaders to stop this insanity?
I think we’ve all gone nuts.
As I was reading that I couldn’t help but think that if it were the Bush administration, they would just do it whether it was the right time or not. I’m willing to wait to see if they can do it right. Afghanistan is an odd place, prehistoric in many ways.
Just one question… do you think that bombing Kandahar, killing hundreds, destroying homes and creating thousands of refugees is going to increase or decrease the terrorist threat to the U.S.?
Isn’t the plan to wrestle Kandahar from the Taliban, I wasn’t aware that we were just going to blow the shit out of them “killing hundreds, destroying homes and creating thousands of refugees”. That may very well happen, I suppose, but the goal of the Obama administration is to get the country stable enough for us to get the hell out. If we just pull out prematurely AGAIN, how do you suppose that is going to affect the terrorist threat in America? Bush put us there and bought the problem, Obama is trying to sell it back to them but we can’t just return it….no receipt.
yes, they say they’re taking time for the counterinsurgency strategy to work first, which seems to me a good idea and, if/ when it does, will mean less emphasis on the military ultimately. I hope they have Greg Mortensen giving some input.
“I’m willing to wait to see if they can do it right.“
When will Americans stop waiting to see if their government will find the right way to do something that is fundamentally wrong. When something is wrong there is no way to do it right. Didn’t Vietnam, or Iraq teach you guys anything?!
But we also can’t abandon them again, we have to leave the country with some sort of stability….nuclear next door in Pakistan and India, not a good place to have unstability. The lesson certainly should have been learned from Vietnam and Iraq, but obviously wasn’t. No one ever seems to learn a lesson from war, they just keep happening.
So you’re saying that the true lesson of the Vietnam War was that we left too early and that, after killing 2 to 3 million Vietnamese, we should have continued ”stabilizing” the country before leaving? Was not exploding more bombs than were dropped in WWII enough? Not to mention the quarter of a billion cluster bombs dropped on Laos.
At some point you have to say it’s not worth burning down the village in order to save it.
Afghanistan is not Vietnam. Drawing parallels to Vietnam is just simplifying things. They aren’t even close to being the same, so I don’t feel like I need to go there.
Yes, tell me how telegraphing punches is a good move.
Agreed, but that was Bush and the Republicans criticism of the left’s insistence on a withdrawal timetable for Iraq.
Republicans can’t tell the difference between a punch and a truce. Nor do they understand the political difference between the two.
Fundamentally, Republicans (and hawks in general) don’t get the idea that “war is politics by different means” means that most wars have some political solution. Even the surrender of Japan in World War II was arrived at through politics and diplomacy. After the atomic bomb was dropped, the Japanese leadership had a political decision on their hands and the US leadership could accept the surrender or kept pounding away. That last decision was made through diplomacy.
SecDef Gates said on Wednesday there will have to be progress:
Of course there will be “progress”, as the Pentagon reported to the Congress last month. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy:
But don’t think that all this “progress” will bring quick results. Gates on Thursday:
“conditions based” — Rummy used to love that term.
Meanwhile back in the real world, this week has already been disappointing. Michael Cohen, Democracy Arsenal:
And the NATO death toll for June is already up to 28. The Pentagon says that this is because Obama has nearly tripled the US forces in Afghanistan, so this provides Afghans with more targets. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman:
Oh well, it’s all “necessary.”
Don, I have to say, I’ve really appreciated both this and your comments on Iranian sanctions yesterday. Thanks so much.
You’re welcome, Geov.
i appreciated those comments as well: IIRC, the comments on that post consisted of rebuke after rebuke. good stuff!
“we intend…to be Afghanistan’s partner for a very long time into the future. . .we will continue to partner with them far into the future“
Translation: We intend to attempt to militarily dominate Afghanistan for a very long time into the future. We will continue to occupy, bomb the crap out of, and kill Afghan women and children far into the future in our effort to dominate the country.
“The level of activity is high, so as we conduct our operations and engage with the enemy, the opportunities for hostile contact are going to go up.“
Translation: As astonishing as it always is, when we dramatically escalate our violence, the overall level of violence increases with the result that more of our guys get killed. We are still consistently surprised by that, and haven’t figured out why it always happens like that, but it always, always does.
There’s still a war in Afghanistan?!! :::gasp:::
Alvin greene
“but this just seems absurdly stupid to me“
It’s kind of like that well-known oxymoron “military intelligence”. When was the last time, exactly, that the military did anything intelligent?
“‘When you go to protect people, the people have to want you to protect them,’ McChrystal told reporters. ‘It’s a deliberate process. It takes time to convince people.’“
You see, their first mistake is that they assume the Afghans (or Iraqis, or Pakistanis, or Yemenis) are so primitive, naive, and stupid that they actually believe this “we’re here to protect you” bullshit. Their second mistake is to be shocked – SHOCKED! – when the very people they say they are trying to “protect” actually start actively resisting their “protection”.
Careful Booman. You’re having trouble working up a proper sense of exasperation due to the insanity of the whole narrative wearing thin. http://thwapschoolyard.blogspot.com/2010/06/stupid-obama.html got a note from me on that. Here’s a quip from Ruin of Empire – an interesting read.
http://www.chris-floyd.com/articles/1-latest-news/1975-war-on-the-world-obamas-surge-in-state-terror
.html
Most sentient beings have long recognized that murdering civilians in foreign countries — especially through the cowardly methods of “secret war” — is entirely counterproductive … if your actual aim is to enhance America’s national security by reducing violent extremism and hatred for the United States, that is. However, if your aim is to perpetuate and expand a militarist empire and the bloated, brutal, corrupt, war-profiteering system that supports it, why then, secret war and civilian slaughter are perfectly logical and remarkably effective methods.
Now I admit, Greenwald isn’t that blunt.
How Israeli propaganda shaped U.S. media coverage of the flotilla attack
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/06/04/israel?utm_source=feedburner&utm_me
dium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+salon%2Fgreenwald+%28Glenn+Greenwald%29