On Friday, the Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, made a direct request to President Obama asking for the deployment of tens of thousands of more troops in Afghanistan. (Some reports indicate he asked for as many 60,000 troops.)
Top U.S. military leadership consists of some of the best minds in the business. Smart, dedicated, and ready to fight. But America should be concerned over the degree of power and influence that the McChrystal recommendation for more troops may hold. Republican political leaders in particular tell us President Obama must listen to his generals, and the G.O.P preaches to the public that when it comes to Afghanistan, President Obama must take the recommendations of his military commanders in the field into account before all else, and follow those recommendations to the letter and without hesitation.
But before any decisions are made regarding the recommendations of Gen. McChrystal or other military officers waging war in Afghanistan, a balance must be found between the “send in more troops” mentality of military recommendations, and other possible and maybe not-quite-so militaristic options.
We must all remember that our generals have just two basic responsibilities: To defend America and win wars. Their worldly outlook and strategic viewpoint begins and ends at envisioning victory. This is how they are trained, and this is how we should expect them to think. The purpose of the military is to fight for America when required. It is not their job to create economic opportunity, educate civilians, or establish political systems and processes. They are trained to shoot guns and stand between us and the bad guy. That is what they do, and that is what we need them to do.
Yet right now in Afghanistan, besides fighting the Taliban, we need somehow to create economic opportunity, educate civilians, and establish political systems and processes. So when it comes to deciding our next line of strategy there, we must be wary of over-listening to the military mind.
Bear with me for a brief analogy: Similar in some ways to Afghanistan, several of our own urban centers here in America are plagued with violence, physical devastation, social disorder, and lack of good educational opportunities. Yet we do not look to local chiefs of police to recommend the primary plan for a city’s economic redevelopment. Although crime control and public safety are critical elements of decent urban quality of life, policing is but one factor in any planned effort to rebuild or revitalize a city.
Ditto the case in Afghanistan. To look to our generals—people who have spent their careers focused on training and strategizing the use of firepower—is a little like asking the chief of police to become the lead recommender when it comes to the main decisions on rebuilding a city. In both cases, their input is critical, but it must not be the sole voice or the primary voice of urban rehabilitation or nation rehabilitation. The people of the United States and our elected representatives must understand that any recommendations on saving the situation in Afghanistan originating from the minds of generals will always focus primarily on what they know: Military operations.
And we must further realize that following such recommendations will result in more military power focused on the region of Afghanistan, whether or not a military approach is the best solution. At this juncture in Afghanistan, such an approach may be completely the wrong answer.
Just as we would not heed the advice of a police chief for 2,000 additional police officers to envision and create a new urban center, we shouldn’t automatically assume that our generals are in the best position to make the final recommendation call for Afghanistan. At their command are troops and weapons. But what we may need most there might be other things, things not adorned in camouflage patterns.
Yes, we call it the War in Afghanistan. But our former military leadership had its chance to wage an effective and decisive military campaign there starting on October 7, 2001. The better part of a decade later, it now seems clear that lack of focus and the failure of imagination of Donald Rumsfeld and his generals then has sealed us to a fate of something other than a decisive military victory now. There is probably little hope for the type of military victory in Afghanistan that John McCain and others still envision. The tide has turned, and Afghan hearts and minds are lost.
The best solution from a short list of horrible Afghanistan choices is probably to leave. But if Obama has intelligence he cannot share, facts that for national security reasons require America to stay, then the best situation to create is probably a blend of economic, social, and military strategies. And to assume that the generals in charge have the skill, expertise, or indeed the interest in economic or social strategies is to assume too much. We train our military leaders and those that serve under them to think in military terms, to lead and be the best fighters our country can produce. This is their focus and their mission. It is unfair to expect them to think much on issues other than military. But we would be equally unfair to ourselves to leave the primary Afghanistan recommendations in the hands of these men. They are good people, but as is their duty, they focus on military victory.
The traditional “war” part of the Afghanistan War is history, if it ever existed in the first place. There was then and is now no organized single enemy to surrender to us, and no treaty will ever be signed on the deck of some battleship signifying our victory. There is no war to win. Obama’s focus is now on the clean-up, and making the best of his terrible choices. When we hear than Gen. McChrystal insists on 60,000 more U.S. troops in Afghanistan as the best way forward, he is doing his job. But we should all ask ourselves if he is the most appropriate person to take the lead in recommending to the president what comes next. The answer is probably no.
If we can withdraw, then we should leave Afghanistan. But if we must stay, it is critical that the important military voices of recommendation are counter-balanced by the voices of equally important economic, social, and regional expertise. The solution to the mess America exasperated through eight years of high-level bungling must now involve renewing and revitalizing a devastated Afghanistan with ideas beyond warfare.