Jeff Huber (at-Largely): McChrystal's Myth

[laststeamtrain]

McChrystal's Myth
Posted by Jeff Huber

There is no such thing a “victory” in the kinds of wars we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best one can hope for in these types of conflicts—counterinsurgency efforts in far flung corners of the globe with fuzzy objectives and vague necessity—is to not be seen as having “lost.” For that to happen, unfortunately, you have to stick around for so long and fade away so gradually that, by the time you leave, nobody notices you’re gone.

The neoconservative apparatus that got us into Iraq for reasons we still haven’t decided on threatens to keep us in Afghanistan indefinitely for reasons yet to be determined. Everything we’re doing in Central and Southwest Asia supposedly has something to do with eradicating al-Qaeda, yet there is no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The argument for persisting in Afghanistan says that we have to make sure al-Qaeda doesn’t go back there, yet as former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, credible assessments suggest that “Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.”

For the sake of keeping fewer than a dozen evildoers out of Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his legion of supporters in the Pentagon, Congress and the media insist we need to bring increase U.S. troop levels to over 100,000, and the overall coalition force level to a half-million, the number of troops we had on the ground at one point in Vietnam.

The half-million figure comes from the counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency), which calls for 20 to 25 counterinsurgent forces per every 1,000 locals, and Afghanistan contain a tad over 28 million locals. Your cat can do the math from there. What your cat can’t tell you is the thought process behind the conclusion that it makes sense to pit a half-million persons under arms against a force of eight or ten persons who aren’t in the vicinity of where you plan to place your half-million armed people.

That’s because your cat’s thought process isn’t as short-circuited as the cognitive quagmire going on in the minds of McChrystal and the people backing him.

The short version of this loopy logic equation goes like this: you put McChrystal in charge and he’s asking for what an official doctrine manual says he should ask for, so you have to give it to him. This skips over a trail of false assumptions that, lined up end to end, would span the Khyber Pass.

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http://www.atlargely.com/atlargely/2009/09/mcchrystals-myth.html

[FiveGoodMen]

1. Please, someone, explain this to our president

[laststeamtrain]

4. The Kagans & Co. are trying to hyp-mo-tize the President.

You’re Never Going to Believe This, But the Kagans Want to Add At Least 40,000 Troops to Afghanistan
By Spencer Ackerman 9/22/09 9:02 AM

"The sun rose today and its gravitational force kept the planet twisting around it through the void, so naturally Fred and Kim Kagan, the neoconservative wing of counterinsurgency, have put out a call for between 40,000 and 45,000 additional troops to be sent to Afghanistan in the next year. Both Kagans advised the McChrystal strategy review that leaked yesterday to box President Obama into escalation. But they say — really, really prominently — that they’re not speaking for Gen. Stanley McChrystal or anyone else. Maybe so, but now we have a good idea of who on the review advocated for 40,000 troops, something that fellow adviser Anthony Cordesman recently reported." ...http://washingtonindependent.com/60395/youre-never-going-to-believe-this-but-the-kagans-want-to-add-at-least-40000-troops-to-afghanistan

[Demeter]

2. Without a Defined Purpose, There Can Be No Victory, and NO Public SUpport

And we never had a purpose from Bush. To continue his aimless, wasteful ways is cowardice and lazy thinking.

And if the real purpose was commercial, corporate empire-building, then expose it and end it.

[Lost Jaguar]

3. Neck Deep...

...in the Big Muddy! Mr. Huber is consistently correct in his essays. I read his pieces regularly.