The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post. Bob Woodward reports; Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung provide analysis; and a declassified version of document is available on washingtonpost.com.
The Report: Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible." ... McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians. He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.
Bob Woodward's full story can be found here.
Analysis: McChrystal's assessment, in the view of two senior administration officials, is just "one input" in the White House's decision-making process. ... When Obama announced his strategy in March, there were few specifics fleshing out his broad goals, and the military was left to interpret how to implement them. As they struggle over how to adjust to changing reality on the ground, some in the administration have begun to fault McChrystal for taking the policy beyond where Obama intended, with no easy exit. But Obama's deliberative pace — he has held only one meeting of his top national security advisers to discuss McChrystal's report so far — is a source of growing consternation within the military. "Either accept the assessment or correct it, or let's have a discussion," one Pentagon official said. "Will you read it and tell us what you think?" Within the military, this official said, "there is a frustration. A significant frustration. A serious frustration."
The full piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Karen DeYoung can be found here.
The Department of Defense on Sunday evening released a declassified version of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal's assessment of the war in Afghanistan. The Post agreed to publish this version, which includes minor deletions of material that officials said could compromise future operations, rather than a copy of the document marked "confidential." The document can be viewed here.
Comments
One of the features of our modern battlefield which we have to deal with is a media which thrives upon sensationalism, it is focused upon the short term impact of an action or activity, not upon the long term benefit of a stratagem or operation designed to achieve a defined end state - this is something they are not equipped to explain in the 10 second sound bite.
1. To defeat an ideology you are reduced to considering:
a. introducing a competing ideology - not a wise choice
b. accepting massive casualties since only through the elimination of the "hard core" will you achieve the end state that allows you to declare victory (I recognize that "victory" is an anathema in our current environment)
2. I well remember the highway of death - I was there. I recall making the observation, upon hearing of the response from Washington and London, that to end the campaign now would result in our having to return in 10 years to do it all again. (Okay - I was off by two years - but I was also there in 2003.) We bought into the perverted notion that war could be done in a bloodless fashion with minimal casualties, thanks to many an advocate in politics and industry - and the media who also acclaimed technological advances as a means to make war more humane. Let's be real, we are all students of history, review the ideological (i.e. religious) wars of the past - these were bloody, almost genocidal affairs. The war we are engaged in is viewed, by one side at least, as just that, is it not time we also at least accept that view as being predominant within the operational environment in which we are currently engaged?
3. Vendetta is a cultural norm in this operational environment, it is an
accepted behavior. We should also accept it, deal with it as the Mongols did, when a Mongol soldier was killed in ambush, the nearest village was surrounded, the people lined up, a single Mongol warrior walked down the line and beheaded every person, save one, who was told to spread the word that such behavior would not be tolerated. Attacks and ambushes against Mongol forces and caravans ceased quickly after these incidents. Remember, in the eyes of the local culture this is acceptable behavior, and while I do not advocate murder, we should accept this behavior and employ it to our benefit.
4. Strategic communication from an environment such as Afghanistan can be controlled. Such a policy may go against our nature, but superimposing our values upon the operational environment will only get our people killed with no results to show for their efforts. The photo of the little girl in Vietnam is indeed iconic, but the telling photo that turned the American populace against the war was that of the Saigon General Officer killing the bound Viet Cong terrorist (whom it was revealed years after the publication of the photo had butchered the general's family). A picture can tell a story, and many times that story is fiction. In the eyes of many we are already a pariah nation no matter what we do. When we superimpose our values upon the operational environment, anything which happens then reflects upon us in a negative fashion, our opponents impose their values upon us and kill us with impunity, and in fact celebrate each dead American. In our current doctrinal literature are admonishments to our planners and commanders in the field to avoid superimposing our views and values upon the environmental landscape in which we are engaged in combat. Sun Tzu provided the observation that if we know the enemy and know ourselves we need not fear the results of a hundred battles. Yet by viewing the enemy through our own cultural lenses we fail to know them - we only see the actions they take which do not fit into our value structure, and because we do not understand them, we fail to counter their actions in an effective manner. We will lose the war because we insist upon applying our standards in an operational environment in which they are inappropriate and will not work effectively.
5. Afghanistan has been a nation at war for centuries; a multi-generational "fix" is not something we can hope for. Strength and power is respected and understood in a society rife with the war lord mentality. I would suggest that our strategy needs to incorporate the development of a strong central authority - call it a super war lord if imposing a dictatorial government is something which is not palatable. Once a central government is established, strong enough to ward off all challenges, THEN that multi-generational change can occur, but it is unlikely to occur before that time.
6. Our current and emerging doctrine emphasizes that the commander has to understand and define the operational environment; it further admonishes us to AVOID superimposing our values and cultural beliefs upon the cultural or human landscape which is part of that operational environment. This could mean that we will, at some point, HAVE to make the decision to bar the media from the operational environment in order to prevent that cultural looking glass effect such as we had in Desert Storm and the footage of the highway of death (you may recall the camera crews who filmed the highway of death did so on their own, i.e. in an unauthorized and non-embedded fashion - they came very close to being shot down by friendly forces). We have to make a
decision at some point to either fight a war as we state we shall in our
doctrinal literature or to continue on as we are and allow the voice of the media generated opinion to dictate our actions.
The observation that our strategic concepts are based upon a 2 and 4 year election cycle is quite appropriate. Our entire cultural bias in that regard places us at a disastrous disadvantage with regard to our probable and actual opponents, who are not limited in that manner. Ideology plays a role in dealing with the Taliban, and ideology plays a role in the development of our strategic concepts as well. Until such time as our elected leadership shares the intellectual understanding of what a national strategy should be - which is not something which is, or should be, predicated upon either a political party or short term (short sighted?) political or business expediency (or personal prejudices), we will be hampered in our efforts to properly design a campaign or operational plan which will allow us to shape the operational environment to meet our national objectives. When our national objectives are ill-formed or undefined (as they currently seem to be) the campaign and operational design of our commanders in the operational environment will be equally flawed, which means, of course, that we are asking to be defeated.
As is mentioned above, we are already the worlds' whipping boy, largely through the concerted efforts of our own media and the political agendas of self appointed elitists in public office. Perhaps it is time to admit that war is a messy business, people die and in order to stop that from happening either all the cultures of the world must change or we wage war to eliminate the cause of the conflict, achieve the desired end state and thereby end the war.
Okay - perhaps a bit strident - but we need an open debate which recognizes the extremes. We also need to abandon the habit of seeing the human terrain of the operational environment as if we were viewing our own, cultures differ from one another, and that includes the cultural values. How we view and value life is not how other cultures on this planet view them, we need to recognize this and do so in more than a cursory academic manner.
Define and understand the operational environment.
Understand how the human terrain impacts the physical environment within the operational environment.
Identify the cultural differences, identify the key aspects and exploit them - i.e. KNOW YOUR ENEMY, and know those who are not your enemy as well, each group plays a role in the environment, by understanding the human terrain and having a defined end state we can achieve success.
Understand the courses of action open to us, and the possible ramifications on the human terrain of the operational environment if one or another is chosen.
Be prepared to quickly change the campaign or operational design to reflect the changing operational environment.
As professionals, that is the least we can do.
You're talking about a President who's asking his subordinates to tell him what his "strategy" is?
President Obama has been treating McChrystal as his dedicated fall guy because President Obama doesn't know what he's doing and doesn't have a plan.
Loyalty is a road that runs both ways.
And the way it's supposed to work, is that the President develops a strategy, and then the military tells him how they can best achieve it. Not the other way around.
I believe there was an agreement in Brussels not long ago that a secondary report concerning the exact details for further resources would be forthcoming shortly.
This smacks of insubordination, and doesn't help with trust and confidence between the White House and our uniformed services in leaking this report. A report that contained classified information.
Frankly, I'd be "fustrated" also at the lack of loyalty and breach of trust with my commander, as President. But then, he is dealing with an indivudal that would lie to a fallen Soldier's mother.