Well, frumps, if Gen. Stanley McChrystal is to be believed, the tide is turning in Afghanistan and victory (whatever that means) can’t be far behind. Now this is, indeed, a very encouraging assessment because Gen. McChrystal has only been in charge of the Afghan operation for about seven months, during which time he has only received about 1,500 of the additional 37,000 troops that he felt were absolutely the bare minimum reinforcements necessary to prevent the Afghani sky from falling. This general must be some sort of extra special guy to turn the tide in seven months while mere mortals have been struggling with the same set of problems for eight years.
So does this mean that we can call off the surge and spend the extra $33 billion on health care premiums now that things are going so swimmingly in Afghanistan? Don’t count on it, frumps. I believe that Gen. McChrystal has mounted a stealth political counterattack here. Americans are tired of these wars; we feel that we have been duped, exploited and financially gouged to wage war for dubious reasons and, in some cases, shameful ways. The American electorate and the majority party are starting to make ominous noises about the futility of pumping any more money into our Middle East adventures.
The only way to turn those sentiments around is to launch the “victory is within our reach” ad campaign that will keep the military-industrial complex a hot commodity. That’s basically what McChrystal is up to – persuading the “stockholders” (US taxpayers) that his new venture is on the verge of a big payday if we just keep the faith (and keep buying more shares).
Watch:
It’s a Small World After All
See it’s a whole new product, this counterinsurgency thing (that some of us don’t like to call counterinsurgency because that term implies a bigger commitment than we care to make). It’s all about winning hearts and minds, taking off the body armor, parking the humvees, talking crops with the farmers and giving little kids chocolates and soccer balls; and, suddenly, Afghan civilians will no longer aid and abet the Taliban, obey their tribal leaders or look upon Western soldiers as infidels. And just to prove this counterinsurgency scheme works, Gen. McChrystal and Hamid Karzai shared a tea break in the bazaar of a formerly bad neighborhood while Afghan paparazzi snapped their photo.
All well and good if it keeps innocent people from dying, unfortunately, it hasn’t. According to the recently released annual report put out by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, civilian deaths in Afghanistan climbed in 2009 to their highest number since the fall of the Taliban.
McChrystal and Karzai at tea in Nawa
The rising number of innocent Afghan casualties constitutes a major failure for the American forces if judged by the standards set out by General Stanley McChrystal in the summer of 2009, when he testified before Congress. At that time, McChrystal stated that American success in Afghanistan should be measured by “the number of Afghans shielded from violence,” not the number of enemy fighters killed.”
According to the UN report, it is the Taliban that is killing more and more civilians. Civilian deaths at the hands of American-led forces actually declined dramatically last year. But Afghanis are not quibbling over identities on the other end of the gun, all that they care about is that a brother, a son or a husband is dead because of the armed conflict that the Americans and the Karzai government have brought down on them.
Another conscious decision that the US military has made has been to draw the fighting into populated areas. The UN report stresses that it:
“has highlighted concerns in numerous reports, briefings, and dialogue with ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] on the issue of the location of military facilities within or near areas where civilians are concentrated. The presence of IM [international military] bases in residential areas continues to be a major concern. This runs counter to international humanitarian law principles designed to protect the civilian population against the dangers arising from military operations.”
“When military bases are established in or near residential areas — in either urban or rural areas — this is an additional security threat given the high likelihood of attacks by armed groups or from retaliatory activities by IM forces. The presence of IM bases can generate hostility amongst the civilian population, particularly if civilian casualties arise as a result of their presence.”
Now, of course, our military justifies all of this as good, sound counterinsurgency measures. A counterinsurgency force must be on the ground, mixing with the target population every day to win their trust. That works as long as the troops that are installed amidst the population do not have big red bulls-eyes on their backs. If they do, then the whole shooting match is fair game unless, of course, the enemy has moral scruples about taking out human shields. It doesn’t appear that the Taliban or Al Qaeda have any such inhibitions.
And, for the better part of eight years, neither did we. Hundreds of thousands of pounds of aerial bombs have been dropped and thousands of rounds of artillery and mortars have been fired, there is even evidence of the use of white phosphorous bombs (might as well be napalm) and an admission that Western forces have used WP in Afghanistan. These are weapons and methods that cannot be precisely targeted and are indiscriminate killers.
I think before we buy Gen. McChrystal’s rosy version of our prospects in Afghanistan we need to look at a few other data points that are readily available. Things like these have an impact:
- The Afghan people have been crippled by war; many households are without a breadwinner, infrastructure is perennially disrupted and many Afghans are literally crippled due to injuries and lack of modern medical facilities
- People who are desperately poor and have no prospects of supporting themselves or their families will do just about anything for anyone if it means surviving another day
- We think it would be best for Afghans to have a central government despite the fact that culture, history and topography all militate against such a government there
- The government that the US has backed and empowered is about as corrupt as they come and no better (even arguably worse) for the Afghan people than the government that we forcibly ousted
- We have created utter turmoil in Afghanistan and somehow we now believe that we can win over its largely illiterate, desperately poor and beleaguered populace by somehow persuading ordinary Afghans that our totally alien American culture can do more for them than people who speak the same language, go to the same mosques and share the same culture.
Gen. McChrystal is heartened by the fact that immediately after President Obama’s speech at West Point there was a big uptick in recruitment for the Afghan military. McChrystal attributes that rise to Afghanis realizing that they have a “limited time offer” to get in on a military career.
Color me cynical, but I think that there’s an equal chance that news of the surge in US troops persuaded a lot of Aghanis that it might be a good time to sign up and get a decent weapon before the shooting starts again.
Technorati Tags: Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Afghanistan, surge, counterinsurgency, collateral damage, Taliban, Al Qaeda
