McChrystal – Public Intelligence Blog

This Week at War: America's Last Counterinsurgent?

McChrystal report unwittingly slays counterinsurgency doctrine

September 25, 2009

Robert Haddock

This summer the U.S. government has faced a deteriorating crisis in Afghanistan. Such crises tend to force policymakers to face up to the facile assumptions they have previously made. Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s report to his civilian masters on the faltering counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has caused President Barack Obama and his advisers to face up to their basic assumptions about U.S. objectives and strategies for perhaps the first time. Obama and his team seem very likely to conclude from this long overdue examination of first principles that it will be impractical for the U.S. to successfully implement a counterinsurgency campaign plan in Afghanistan. McChrystal’s assessment has unwittingly tossed the U.S. military’s counterinsurgency field manual into the shredder. McChrystal’s report is brutally honest about the troubles in Afghanistan.

Click on title above for complete article, below for Phi Beta Iota comment and links to three “fix” pieces.

Continue reading “Journal: Integrity, Afghanistan, & The White House”

2009/09/222009/09/22

Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots

10 Security, Military, Strategy

2001: What to do about Afghanistan? Prospects for Stability

2008: Memo Leak Says Mission In Afghanistan Doomed

Meet the Afghan Army: Is it a figment of Washington's imagination? by Ann Jones

Afghan agony: More troops won't help by Ralph Peters in the NY Post

Time to Get Out of Afghanistan By George F. Will Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Continue reading “Journal: Afghanistan–Connecting the Dots”

2009/09/062009/09/10

Journal: Ralph Peters on Stifling of General McChrystal

Ethics, Military

O's Afghan woes

White House stifles general

September 3, 2009

The classified status report from Afghanistan by Gen. Stanley McChrystal was censored by the White House before its submission. As a result, it's all bun and no burger.

According to multiple (angry) sources, McChrystal — our top soldier on the ground — intended to ask for 28,000 more US troops. A presidential hatchet man directed the general not to make the request: Troop increases would be “addressed separately.”

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Cooking the political books doesn't win wars. It didn't work for the Bush administration, and it won't work for Obama. We shouldn't waste another American life without a clear strategy our president will back with his full authority.

When the White House silences the generals in the field, it condemns our troops to the silence of the grave.

Phi Beta Iota: Old news but new anger. The “hatchet man” was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates himself, calling an urgent meeting in Europe. read the full story from August as published in Foreign Policy. Lies kill ones comrades. When the Secretary of Defense is the point man for gutting his own general in the field, it is time for the Secretary to dig deep and either resign on principle, or tell the truth to the public and Congress. The Obama Administration, and we specifically include General James Jones, USMC (Ret) is an extension of the ideological fantasy land that characterizes the two-party tyranny that represents Wall Street rather than the U.S. citizen, voter, and taxpayer. It is high time we restored the integrity of our Cabinet officials, demanded integrity of our Congress and White House, and demanded reality-driven policy that is crafted with the best interests of the American people rather than Wall Street. Zbigniew Brzezinski is behind most of this, and is long overdue for the same war criminal status that Henry Kissinger has enjoyed for the past decade, ever since being chased out of France by a warrant for his arrest.