Opinion: Time to Admit Afghan Strategy Isn't Working

(June 23) -- The bombshell Rolling Stone article featuring disparaging quotes from Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff about civilian leaders has shaken official Washington over the past 24 hours. As it should. Their words demonstrate a breathtaking level of arrogance, poor judgment and behavior verging on formal insubordination.

But there is a far more important takeaway from this episode: Increasingly, it appears that the president's strategy for success in Afghanistan simply is not working.

In fact, the most important quote from the article might be the admission by a senior adviser to McChrystal that "if Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular." Maybe now they will.

Since last year, McChrystal's strategy has been one of population-centric counterinsurgency, a resource- and time-intensive strategy that focuses on cultivating the hearts and minds of local civilians rather than targeting the enemy directly. According to the Army's counterinsurgency manual, the key to an effective "COIN" strategy is a reliable host country partner that is seen as legitimate in the eyes of its citizens. But as the Rolling Stone piece makes clear, McChrystal's approach is failing.

For example, reporter Michael Hastings tells of McChrystal needing a sign-off from Hamid Karzai for a major offensive and being unable for several hours to get the Afghan president's aides to wake him from a nap. This story only reinforces the widely held view that Karzai is an unreliable partner for a counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. Indeed, this is precisely the conclusion drawn last fall by U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, in a cable to Obama -- a cable that McChrystal labeled in the Rolling Stone article as a "betrayal."

In addition, McChrystal's efforts to protect Afghan civilians are not going well, either. As Hastings notes, McChrystal "frequently finds himself apologizing for the disastrous consequences of counterinsurgency. In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent from the same period in 2009."

These numbers are supported by a recent U.N. report that documented a 94 percent increase in roadside bombings, a 45 percent rise in assassinations and a doubling of suicide attacks versus the same period last year. And many of the attacks are occurring in the "country's southern and southeastern regions" where the U.S. escalation has been the greatest -- suggesting that where U.S. troops go, violence and death soon follow.

All of this is happening at the same time that U.S. troops on the ground are complaining that overly restrictive rules of engagement are letting the enemy gain the military initiative while putting American troops in greater harm. In the Rolling Stone article's illuminating anecdote, McChrystal tries to convince soldiers in Kandahar that the focus on civilian casualties will bring results and help the U.S. to capture the "hearts and minds" of locals, telling the troops jokingly, "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks. But it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."

None of this should be surprising. American troops are not trained to be "armed social workers"; they are trained to kill the enemy. Expecting these same soldiers to capture the intricacies of counterinsurgency, which has bedeviled Western armies for generations, is a tall order indeed. This is not to suggest that U.S. troops should be engaging indiscriminately with the enemy; it suggests that trying to win the hearts and minds of civilians in southern and eastern Afghanistan (where the Taliban remains a formidable enemy) might not be an achievable task.

Finally, Hastings captures a senior military official in Kabul floating the possibility that "we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here." In the context of Obama's declaration in December that troop withdrawals from Afghanistan would commence in July 2011, this is a rather stunning statement. It suggests that the president and his generals are simply not on the same page when it comes to the length of the American commitment to Afghanistan.

In the end, whatever happens in the Oval Office between McChrystal and Obama, the focus going forward must be on addressing a military strategy that not only isn't working but appears to be based on a dubious set of assumptions about what is achievable in Afghanistan.

Plans for an upcoming offensive in Kandahar and resistance to the opening of political negotiations with the Taliban must be reconsidered; and a strategy that relies too heavily on a limited Afghan government and asks the near impossible of our armed forces should be shelved.

Out of the ugliness of the past few days comes a unique opportunity for the president to sit down with his national security advisers and devise a new strategy for Afghanistan that is realistic and appropriate to U.S. interests. Achieving that objective -- and ensuring the success of U.S. efforts in Afghanistan -- is more urgent than ever. And it's certainly more important than the fate of one general.


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