In the Saturday edition of Stars and Stripes General Stanley McChrystal proves once again that Afghanistan is less a theater of war and more a theater of the absurd:
McChrystal Sees Victory Ahead in Afghanistan
U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan "are not winning yet, but we are going to win," Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force, told Stars and Stripes in an interview Friday.
But the general said it was not possible to say how long it will take to achieve victory, which he defined as a situation where "the insurgency is not an existential threat to the government or the people" of Afghanistan. (Italics mine)
By Drew Brown, Stars and StripesMideast edition, Saturday, January 2, 2010
More below the fold:
Okay, let’s back up here. The supreme commander of all NATO forces in Afghanistan is promising victory. "...we are going to win,..." You can’t get much clearer than that, can you? But wait, success (winning) is defined as " a situation where ‘the insurgency is not an existential threat to the government or the people." Leaving aside for the moment the obvious snark I could throw in about the General trying to channel Soren Kiergegaard, I will assume what he really meant to say was "a situation where the insurgency is not an existing threat to the government or the people. The question still remains, why does he refer to both the government and the people of Afghanistan as if they are somehow different? Did they not just have an election? Are the people and the government not one and the same? And if not, who are we really there to protect and defend from "existential" threats?
He added that protecting civilians remains the goal of the allied counterinsurgency strategy.
So the compelling reason for which we are putting our soldiers in harm’s way is to protect and defend Afghan civilians? And how long will it take for us to make sure they’re safe?
"There’s no way to put an exact timeline on it, because as I’ve said, the Afghan people will decide [what victory is]," McChrystal said, speaking by phone from Kabul.
Wait a minute. Hold the phone. You just said that victory would be when the insurgents were not an existential threat. Now you’re telling me that the war’s not over till the Afghan people decide they are safe. So all we really need to do is convince the Afghan people that they are safe, right? And how are we going to do that exactly?
The centerpiece of the strategy, outlined by McChrystal when he took command of the 44-nation coalition last summer, is to focus on protecting significant population centers. McChrystal said Friday that these areas would include not only significant cities, but also prime agricultural centers that "have a significant percentage of the population."
In southern Afghanistan, which is almost uniformly Pashtun and where the Taliban are most resilient, McChrystal said the focus would be on an area stretching from the Helmand River valley, where more than 10,000 U.S. Marines are deployed, along with British and other forces, east to the Taliban’s former spiritual capital of Kandahar, and down to Spin Boldak, an important trading town and crossing point on the border with Pakistan.
"That’s an economic zone that has about 80 to 85 percent of the population of those two provinces, Helmand and Kandahar provinces," he said. "If you can get a security bubble around that sort of horseshoe-shaped area, then suddenly you protect an awful lot of the population, and you also have an area in which economic and political activity can occur."
So let’s recap. We’re stationing 100,000 plus troops at a cost of one million dollars per soldier, not as the president avers, to "disrupt, disarm, and defeat terrorism, but rather we are putting our brave soldiers in harm's way to make 80 to 85 per cent of the Afghan population feel warm and safe so that "economic and political activity can occur."
So we’re really not fighting a war at all? We’re just trying to make everyone feel good? And how long does McChrystal think this will take?
"[But] I believe that over the next year to 18 months that we’re going to be able to decisively change the perception of momentum and gains by the insurgents."
Oh, what a relief! For a minute there, I thought you were saying we’d be stuck in Afghanistan for years. 18 months, that’s not so bad. But didn’t the Soviets try to achieve the same thing way back when?
With the buildup of U.S. forces, and with NATO countries promising to add at least 7,000 troops, comparisons with the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, which began 30 years ago, are inevitable. McChrystal said that while the Soviets were quickly regarded as occupiers by most Afghans, U.S. and other coalition forces are not.
"I’m the first to tell people that tactically, militarily, [the Soviets] did a lot of things well. But they killed more than a million Afghans in the process, and they created an environment in which the antibodies of the society literally surged against them," McChrystal said.
Oh, that makes perfect sense. We’re going to win in Afghanistan because unlike the Soviets we will be successful at convincing the Afghan people that they are safe from insurgents.
"What we are working on is that we’re really focusing on getting counterinsurgency, protecting the people, in the minds of the Afghan people. We are not viewed as occupiers now."
100,000 troops, probably the same amount of contractors, God only knows how many private militias controlled by ruthless war lords. and he thinks our army is not viewed by Afghans as occupiers?
Like I said at the beginning... Theater of the Absurd.