General McChrystal and His "Retail War"

[laststeamtrain]

Jayne Lyn Stahl
Posted: July 21, 2009 02:42 PM

General McChrystal and His "Retail War"

When, in June, Stanley McChrystal found himself on the brink of taking over as general in Afghanistan, he declared the Afghan war to be "winnable." Now that he's at the helm, he's not so sure. The enemy is starting to morph, and demonstrate what he calls greater resiliency. The battlefield looms larger, and the entire scenario has, not surprisingly, a been there, done that feel to it.

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Obviously, we can no more expect to hear the truth about our Afghanistan offensive from an Obama White House than we did about the massacre of 2,000 Afghanis under another president, George W. Bush. The truth is not a cash crop.

Generations from now, people will look back at this era, wince, and think we may not have succeeded at capitalism, but we did a hell of a good job at covering up.

We can count on a general, Stanley McChrystal who, during the period when he steered the military's Joint Special Operations Command, earned praise for terrorist hunting at broadband speed, but given his desire for a speedy surge, the operation in Afghanistan may someday come to be known as "McChrystal meth."

But, we must concern ourselves more with McChrystal's math, especially given his talk about growing the Afghan army to nearly 50% more than the number of troops LBJ committed to Vietnam. In all likelihood, U.S. troops, not Afghanis, will be the ones to tip the scale at more than 100,000.

And in this, the heaviest month of allied casualties when the commander in the region, General McChrystal, asserts we are in the region to protect the population from being "coerced at midnight by an armed man who shows up and threatens them," we must ask whose uniform that armed man is wearing -- odds are eight to one, it's more likely to be that of an American marine.

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jayne-lyn-stahl/general-mcchrystal-and-hi_b_239682.html

[timeforpeace]

1. Whoa. Hard hitting analysis right there.

[laststeamtrain]

2. ...