UPDATE: So President Obama has decided the only way to resolve the Rolling Stone fiasco — which is really a COIN fiasco – is to put Big Daddy COIN in command. Anyone else feel like we’re on Ozzy’s Crazy Train?
There were two major themes that I took away from the now infamous Rolling Stone piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal. The first is obvious: Stan the Man is an arrogant man’s man who prefers Bud Lite Lime over chardonnay, and who has surrounded himself with a “handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs,†and they are super-cool too. They get sloshed at places called “Kitty O’Shea’s†and crack jokes about wimpy Washington fops like Dick Holbrooke and Joe Biden. They are running the war, reporter Michael Hastings points out. Their swagger comes from the chief maniac himself, Stan the Man, who enthralls Hastings with such witty repartee as this:
“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,†McChrystal says.
He pauses a beat.
“Unfortunately,†he adds, “no one in this room could do it.â€
With that, he’s out the door.
“Who’s he going to dinner with?†I ask one of his aides.
“Some French minister,†the aide tells me. “It’s fu**ing gay.â€
Swell. But aside from getting himself in a pot of boiling water fired over these and other remarks he and his aides make about the President, Biden, Holbrooke, Eikenberry, et al, McChrystal comes off as a real American ideal — that is , if you are a red-blooded, right wing cowboy who holds the military in much higher esteem than the rest of America’s civil institutions. McChrystal should at least be happy that all of his cliched mannerisms and affectations were given the famous Rolling Stone treatment — like being described as a classic fighting general who goes on regular patrols with his soldiers and whose “slate-blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you’ve fu***d up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice.†He’s so dedicated to the war effort and his men that he has seen his wife Annie less than 30 days a year since 2003. When he does see her on their 33rd wedding anniversary, he drags her out with his “inner circle†to dinner at “the least ‘Gucci’ place his staff could find.†Then there’s the cussing and kick-assing, his 100 demerits at West Point, the anti-Parisian-doesn’t-truck-with-no-fancy-schmantzy-bureaucrats ethos. He’s lean (that’s pointed out several times) and mean, and has the temerity to tell his aides that he’s underwhelmed and disappointed with the president when he meets for the first time. Now that’s the kind of guy today’s Republicans and tea partiers would line up behind in a heartbeat.
But aside from noting that Stan and his posse are pretty much “the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan†— and don’t they know it — and more so, the unbelievable break Hastings got when McChrystal and his people said all of these crazy things about administration officials in front of him and on the record, there’s the real story.
Hastings points out what a godforesaken mess Afghanistan is, but he deftly underscores that COIN, and specifically the new rules of engagement handed down by McChrystal himself, are confusing and degrading the morale of the troops on the ground. This isn’t something that Barack Obama has done — Hastings notes early in the piece that McChrystal got nearly all the troops he needed for the 2010 surge — this is about the fundamentals of COIN, the very strategy that McChrystal and his patron Gen. David Petraeus, and friends like Gen. Raymond Odierno, own and have been pushing like a ramrod through Afghanistan since 2009.
We know Rolling Stone has a skeptical if not outright anti-war agenda. But Hastings lets the combat soldiers do the talking and I feel this is the most explosive part of the report:
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,†the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fu****g sense?†asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fu****g bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?â€
The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. “Fu**, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our fu****g gun on,†says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. “I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all fu***d up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don’t understand it themselves. But we’re fu****g losing this thing.â€
McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. “I ask you what’s going on in your world, and I think it’s important for you all to understand the big picture as well,†McChrystal begins. “How’s the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you’re losing?†McChrystal says.
“Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir,†says Hicks.
McChrystal nods. “Strength is leading when you just don’t want to lead,†he tells the men. “You’re leading by example. That’s what we do. Particularly when it’s really, really hard, and it hurts inside.†Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counterinsurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He makes COIN seem like common sense, but he’s careful not to bullshit the men. “We are knee-deep in the decisive year,†he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has the initiative – “but I don’t think we do, either.†It’s similar to the talk he gave in Paris, but it’s not winning any hearts and minds among the soldiers. “This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks,†McChrystal tries to joke. “But it doesn’t get the same reception from infantry companies.â€
During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. “We aren’t putting fear into the Taliban,†one soldier says.
“Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,†McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.â€
“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,†the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.â€
“I agree with you,†McChrystal says. “In this area, we’ve not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I’m telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?â€
A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn’t have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. “That’s the way this game is,†McChrystal says. “It’s complex. I can’t just decide: It’s shirts and skins, and we’ll kill all the shirts.â€
As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn’t succeeded at easing the men’s anger. He makes one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. “There’s no way I can make that easier,†he tells them. “No way I can pretend it won’t hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you’re doing a great job. Don’t let the frustration get to you.†The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren’t buying it.
A lot of people back here haven’t been buying it either. So-called population centric warfare is a fool’s errand. Trying to protect civilians while clearing out the “bad guys†only puts the the troops more at risk, civilians get hurt anyway and the Taliban, well they get to slip back into the shadows, feeding off the elaborate shakedown rackets and a seemingly endless source of support from the population we hope to protect. A vicious cycle. So what is the alternative? McChrystal put his finger on it a bit. Classic counterinsurgency, like what was practiced by the British in the Boer Wars, engaged in pacification, putting women and children in concentration camps. And, as Stan alluded to, just wiping people out. Breaking them down. I don’t think that is what the American people want.
So, the other alternative is disengagement, withdrawal. COINdinista Andrew Exum has already picked up on this from his own reading of the COIN criticisms in the Rolling Stone piece:
Disengagement from Afghanistan? Okay, but what would the costs and benefits of that disengagement be? I am frustrated by the reluctance of the legions of counterinsurgency skeptics to be honest about — or even discuss — the costs and benefits of alternatives. Some do, but not many.
Yes. I wish for that debate to happen. Like right now.
In the meantime, I do not see this Hastings report as a bad thing. It puts the war squarely in the laps of the COINdinistas, where it should be. On it’s current trajectory, the war will fail and the people who own the strategy should be held responsible for it. This might sound like a no-brainer, but the hawks are already trying to fob this mess off on Obama and the White House as the primary puppetmasters of this clusterf***k. I think it’s good to remind the American people that there are a few generals and a posse of “killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs†who made sure they were “in charge†from the very beginning.
Cross-posted at The American Conservative.
McChrystal comes across as a Lt. Col. Bill Kilgore on steroids. Much ado about psychopathic nothing.
If McChrystal were still living with his mother in her basement, then I'd agree there's much ado about nothing. Unfortunately, the idiot has a following in both the military and the Republican Party/neocon establishment. For that reason, his psychopathy is a very real danger.
Obombo can trade in his McChrylser for a high mileage Patraeus but it makes no nevermind.
Regardless of what war horse Obombo decides to drive his Afghan adventure is doomed. Doomed I tell ya!
You see, Borat Obombo is an arrogant, ignorant, pompous horse's petooty who is unable to learn anything from the folly of the Soviet and British empires in Afghanistan
From the "stimulus" to the mortgage bailouts to the bankster bailouts to what's going on in the Gulf to the wars to the…you name it…all the AmeroConned Government can do is stink up the joint, bankrupt the country and destroy the economy and murder, maim or make homeless millions…
All the while the AmeroConned sheeple baa with alacrity and keep electing the same criminals from the same criminal political parties….
It's enough to make ya gouge yer eyeballs out with a grapefruit spoon….
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All the pundits, etc., are so breathless over this COIN debate, but don't know squat. I wrote an Anthropology thesis in 1982 comparing insurgency and counterinsurgency in Vietnam under the French and us. There is nothing new and we are getting the same results. To understand this, all you need to do is simply read the description of the book at Amazon "Tribal Soldiers of Vietnam." Arming militias, corrupt governments, illegal drug profits, it was all there then and is all there now. How depressing.
What's the old phrase again? 'He who fails to learn the lessons of history is doomed to repeat its mistakes?'
Or perhaps something more contemporary? 'Haha you fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders-The most famous of which is "never get involved in a land war in Asia" – but only slightly less well know is this: "Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line!"'
Hint for your thesis–as far as the peasants in the boonies were concerned, the French in the South after WWII and the expulsion of the Japanese were much better than the Americans later, especially the local French, who spoke the language and knew the terrain. And they had fifteen percent of the native population on their side in the south.
They really blew it, however, when the French High Command, taking a page from the Americans, decided to take on the North with "air power" and escalated.
The result was Dienbienphu.
General rule–for most peasants for most of history, they don't give a good goddamn who runs the central "government", which is usually urban and far away, and which means, whoever they are, taxing them and drafting them and the rest.
In Vietnam the US went out of its way to turn a whole countryside of neutrals into Viet Cong sympathizers, mainly by killing large numbers of them from the air or on the ground, burning their rice, and so forth.
In fact, American troops burning rice in South Vietnam villages deserves a whole military dissertation of its own, but those who get the idea in depth about what was wrong with it don't have the time and those who have the time don't have the idea.
The degree to which the US military is incompetent, and has been since WWII, is in itself mind boggling.
Another more general hint as an antidote to American jingoism: The French from their first entrance into Indo-China to the end of their status as occupier after Dienbienphu (many locals stayed in the South) were admittedly Colonialists, Imperialists, and all the rest, just as they were in Algeria.
But you know what–if that was what you were going to be (and one don't defend it) they were a damn sight better at it in every way–politically, culturally, militarily, and so forth–and for a much longer time, than the clumsy imbecilic barbaric Americans.
In fact Vietnamese culture has now a slight but positive French strain in it.
Another thing to note–though the French in Indo-China were despised as colonialists and imperialists, and rightly, there were intimate bonds between the French and Vietnamese Communists.
And that story also has not been told.
Spends all his time with the boys, and even brings them along on his anniversary dinner? Sounds like a closet case.
His wife must be one emotionally battered woman to put up with that kind of relationship.
Another recently discovered supplement to Sun Tzu:
"Win heart mind* of own troops hard. Win heart mind of people own troops bomb shit out of harder."
*NB: "heart mind" is one word in ancient Chinese.
Just thought you'd like to know.
Things must be really "butch" in Afghanistan – first we have those embassy guards lapping vodka off each others bodies and now we Stan and his leather bar warriors "camped" out at HQs. Do they have bath houses on base in Kabul?
Exum's fully prepared for a career in DC with the 'gimme a better idea (that doesn't involve my precious military leaving and further proving the uselessness of its extent) and we have a serious conversation'.
Good post, Ms. Vlahos.
If McChrystal's departure is connected to a Gates plan to ditch Karzai (it will be a disaster if he does), one must demand that Congress rename the Afghan Hound and the Afghan knitted or cabled shawl.
If this is connected also with an Israeli and/or US attack on Iran (now out of the news while Petraeus has been demoted and space opens up for a commander above him), then Congress should also rename Persian melon, Persian cat, and Persian carpet.
After that important business is taken care of, it is a cakewalk.
Obama, by accepting McChrystal's resignation, has created a monster who will run against him for president in 2012, at which time the Afghan war will still be going on. McChrystal will claim he could have won it, and will be supported by the usual deranged elements of the GOP, elements that would have attacked Obama as a wimp if he had NOT accepted the resignation anyway.
Romney McChrystal instead of Romney Palin?
Doubt it.
Anyway McChrystal needs to get some sleep, have a taste of some decent cuisine for a change, and acquire some culture.
Take up ballet perhaps?
Start an Afghan restaurant in Chicago?
Maybe he and Al gore should move in together.
How is Bud Light Lime considered to be manly?
Like all American processed beers it has a hint of having passed through another drinker and having been bottled from R. Mutt's Fountain.
How much more faux-manly can you get than that?
Definitely must be drunk ice cold, right?
For American macro and mass-markeed beer, Augsburg once was fairly good. Have they got rid of it now along with Wisconsin Liederkranz?
Talk about MANLY.
By the way, if McChrystal is still looking for a roomful of tough guys to beat his ass he might try one on one in an empty ballroom with a Dame Margot Fonteyn de Arias in her prime.
She blinds him in one eye on the first pass, does serious kidney damage on the return, blinds his other eye the next time through, and finally goes for a kick in the nuts if they are big enough to locate in a microsecond.
If he doesn't have big enough nuts to target, she inserts her foot en pointe up his ass.
See–that type has been at it since eight years old at least.
Not only Russian Cossacks but even Knute Rockne had great respect for ballet.
Speaking of renaming and since the Israelis are now beginning to demonize Turkey now, after long years of eulogizing everything they did as allies, isn't it time for the US Congress to rename Turkish Bath, Turkish Coffee, Turkish Delight, and so forth?
In fact, even the English Christmas and American Thanksgiving bird, domesticated by the Aztecs, is named after Turkey from the merchants who introduced it into North Africa and later Europe.
Congress will have to be renamed immediately, along with Turkey Shoot and Turkey qua "failure" or "clumsy oaf", etc.
Now that the tiff the Neo-Cons engineered with the French is mostly past and "Freedom Fries" is gone, perhaps some of these can be rechristened "French", as in French Bath, French Coffee, and French Delight.
For the bird, how about "Hoover Hen", and for the shoot, say, "Fallujah Shoot"?
Turkey as failure or oaf is more difficult, but H. L. Mencken had the perfect substitute, "Boobus Americanus".
Have a nice Boobus Americanus day. No doubt the President will spare the life of Hoover Hen.
corr: "Congress will have to rename it"
"Boobus Americanus–the turkey that just keeps on giving."
"You fools! Don't you realize what it means if the Chinese remain? Don't you remember your history? The last time the Chinese came, they stayed a thousand years. The French are foreigners. They are weak. Colonialism is dying. The white man is finished in Asia. But if the Chinese stay now, they will never go. As for me, I prefer to sniff French shit for five years than to eat Chinese shit for the rest of my life."
Ho Chi Minh [quoted by Farnow and others–in different versions]
This is all part of a much larger question, the question of whether or not our country supports the culture of life or the culture of death. The specific question of where Afghanistan fits into this is stated with precision in "At Home and Abroad" by Richard L. Harrell, on page 1, "Misunderstanding Afghanistan" available at Amazon.com.. The failure to understand this question is not a Republican or even a Tea Party failing, but rather a failing of all Americans who prefer the culture of death to the culture of life. It all goes back to Roe v. Wade, all of it, and the curse that our nation and people have been under and remain under ever since. This madness will stop, and the American psyche will clear, when we decide as a people to embrace the culture of life with our whole hearts.
Er, let's see, even leaving out the Korean War, US involvement in Vietnam 1956 (Eisenhower eventually had 900 advisers there and other personnel) to 1975.
Roe versus Wade 1973.
Has one got that right?
If you would actually read what I have written in my books you would see that all of our wars since Abraham Lincoln have promoted the culture of death, iof course it did not begin in 1973. What I am saying here is that the American people ACCEPTED the culture of death at the time of Roe v. Wade, and THAT is what has now taken us literally beyond redemption, unless we go back to go and embrace the cullture of life. Wars are symptoms, not the cause, of the culture of death, and we need to deal with the actual, real core issue to put a stop to it.
"Tt all goes back to Roe v. Wade, all of it, and the curse that our nation and people have been under and remain under ever since."
Oh, pardon, that sounded like you meant, it all goes back to Roe v. Wade, or something like that.
Got it–the War in Vietman must have caused Roe versus Wade, right?
Check out Cardinal Spellman's role in Vietnam and also in the overthrow of Arbenz in Guatemala.
Jesus Christ–did Spellman cause Vietnam cause Roe versus Wade?
Sorry, you are stilll missing the point, badly.
Stan McCrystal was no altar boy, nor was he much different than a lot of officers lured to the ‘dark side’ by the scum and villainy of the JCS.
The ISRAELI OWNED JCS, I might add. Yeah, them guys that wear yarmulke’s and dictate to American’s when to jump and how high they must jump for Israel.
If you look at all of the misdeeds of McCrystal, you suddenly start to see a pattern of consciousness and humanity.
Waltzing out of a humiliating dressing down by a chicago gang punk, must have galled him to no end, and I would have given anything to heard the words McCrystal used to tell Barry Soetoro how to jumpstart his monkey. That’d been worth the firing.
Unfortunately, this has destroyed McCrystal, and is actually KILLING his follow up flunky, Betraeus.
the pending attack on Iran by the neocons who represent ISRAEL in the Congress and Senate is enough to make any sane, just waking up from the nightmare man like Stan McCrystal, fall on his own sword to avoid the coming mistake of a lifetime.
The attack on Iran will be the end of America as we knew her, and McCrystal, far from being an idiot and a beyotch for chicago gang punks, decided not to attend that faggot ball.
"He’s so dedicated to the war effort and his men that he has seen his wife Annie less than 30 days a year since 2003."
Maybe he enjoys Uzbek harlots and bashi bachi orgies instead.
"the new rules of engagement handed down by McChrystal himself, are confusing and degrading the morale of the troops on the ground."
They can probably tell that they are losing and will end up begging on street corners like old Viet Nam vets, if they get out at all.
"You see, Borat Obombo is an arrogant, ignorant, pompous horse's petooty who is unable to learn anything from the folly of the Soviet and British empires in Afghanistan"
And even worse, he plays for the other team!
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