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29 June 2010 By Rick Rozoff
On June 23 President Barack Obama announced the
dismissal of General Stanley McChrystal, commander of
all foreign troops in Afghanistan, and within hours
Associated Press reported that the Western military
death toll in the country had reached at least 80 so
far this month, making June NATO’s deadliest month in
a war that will enter its tenth calendar year on
October 7.
McChrystal, appointed on June 15 of last year as
top commander of all U.S. and all NATO-led
International Security Assistance Force troops in the
South Asian war zone – currently 142,000 with
thousands more on the way – was to have led the
largest assault of the war this month in the province
and capital city of Kandahar.
The campaign, which was to have consisted of 25,000
U.S., NATO and Afghan government troops, appears to
have been postponed indefinitely and may in fact never
occur.
The Kandahar offensive was planned as the
culmination of McChrystal’s much-vaunted
counterinsurgency strategy that was inaugurated in
earnest on February 13 of this year with Operation
Moshtarak in the Marjah district of Kandahar’s
neighboring province, Helmand.
In that operation at least 15,000 U.S., British,
French, Canadian and Afghan National Army troops
poured into a district that has been described as a
loose aggregation of small agricultural hamlets and
other communities with a combined population as low as
50,000. A CBS News report of February 9 stated 30,000
troops were to be involved in the U.S. Marine-led
offensive. [1] One major Western news agency estimated
that the amount of insurgents confronting the
15,000-30,000 NATO and Afghan government forces was as
low as 200.
Far from overwhelming and quickly subjugating the
area, however, the Western troops and their Afghan
subordinates, the latter reluctantly dragooned into
service for the attack, encountered fierce and
intractable resistance.
Almost a month into the fighting – an operation by
U.S.-led forces with as much as a 75- to 150-1
advantage in numbers – the Afghan Independent Human
Rights Commission estimated that 28 civilians,
including 13 children, had been killed and 70 more
civilians had been wounded, 30 of those children. The
report issued by the Afghan Independent Human Rights
Commission attributed most of the casualties to U.S.
and NATO rocket and artillery fire.
Having taken the rural district by storm and, to
employ the Pentagon parlance faithfully passed on by
the mainstream media, eliminated the last pockets of
resistance, the U.S. and NATO victory soon evaporated
with the West’s inability to pacify Marjah for
transfer to the control of the Hamid Karzai regime in
Kabul.
The prototype for not only the largest but what was
planned as the decisive military offensive of the
long-drawn-out war preparatory to the White House’s
pledged withdrawal of troops starting next year – the
assault on the insurgent stronghold of Kandahar –
evidently fared poorly enough for the latter offensive
to be delayed if not scrapped.
Even without an operation in Kandahar, though, the
West has already lost 80 soldiers in Afghanistan this
month, the most since July of 2009 when 79 U.S. and
NATO personnel were killed, with almost half of this
month’s fatalities being non-American.
[NATO unveils first memorial to Alliance war dead
in June, 2009]
To employ one of the expressions from the cliché
book of Western journalism, several grim milestones
have been reached this month. U.S. military deaths in
Afghanistan have officially surpassed the 1,000 mark.
The Pentagon has now been conducting the longest
sustained combat operations in the history of the
United States, exceeding in duration those in Vietnam
from 1964-1973.
The British death toll has reached at least 303,
more than in any other conflict since the 1950s.
Australia lost three soldiers on June 21, the most
deaths in one day the nation has suffered after its
role in supporting the U.S. in Vietnam.
Romania, a new NATO member which will soon have
over 1,600 troops in Afghanistan, lost two soldiers on
June 23. “Romania began to send troops to Afghanistan
in July 2002. The action was the country’s first
military mission abroad after the Second World War.”
[2]
On June 6 a rocket attack on the Polish forward
operating base in Ghazni province wounded four
soldiers and on June 12 a similar attack on the same
base killed one soldier and wounded eight more.
Poland, with 2,600 soldiers serving under NATO in
Afghanistan and another 400 held in reserve for
deployment there, has lost 17 soldiers in one of the
country’s first two overseas military operations –
Iraq being the other – in its history and its first
combat role since the Second World War.
As for NATO as a whole, the Afghan mission has
achieved three major precedents: The first armed
conflict outside of Europe, the first ground war and
the first combat deaths (several hundred such) in the
military bloc’s 61-year history.
It is against this backdrop that General McChrystal was
abruptly and summarily relieved of his dual command
over U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and NATO’s
International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
After a 30-minute tête-à-tête with McChrystal, then
a war council with Vice President Joseph Biden,
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, National
Security Advisor James Jones and White House Chief of
Staff and in many respects grey eminence Rahm Emanuel,
President Obama stood behind a podium in the White
House Rose Garden and announced McChrystal was not to
return to Afghanistan as commander of U.S. and NATO
forces.
His career had ended the way his predecessor’s,
Army General David McKiernan, had a year before: He
was unceremoniously deposed.
Flanked on both sides by Mullen, Biden, Gates and
McChrystal’s hastily appointed successor General David
Petraeus, Obama characterized the sacking of the
Afghan war’s military chief as a resignation, the
public relations equivalent of leaving a loaded
revolver on the desk of a discredited subordinate.
The uptake of the American commander-in-chief’s
address was contained in two sentences: “The conduct
represented in the recently published article does not
meet the standard that should be set by a commanding
general. It undermines the civilian control of the
military that is at the core of our democratic
system.” In fact the piece in question would not be
published for another two days.
He was referring to leaked excerpts from a Rolling
Stone magazine feature on McChrystal and several of
his aides, in particular off-the-cuff comments by
aides as well as McChrystal, including ones uttered
during a bibulous bus ride from Paris to Berlin in
April. Wine keeps neither secrets nor promises as the
aphorism has it.
Members of the establishment press corps (consumed
with envy at not scooping the scandalous quotes
themselves) scrambled for a thesaurus to characterize
McChrystal and company’s less than flattering word
portraits of Biden, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan
Karl Eikenberry and White House Special Representative
for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke as
intemperate, indiscreet, impolitic and so on down the
list. Recall that their indignation was provoked by
assorted obiter dicta issued on the wing and on the
run over a month-long period. Being unenthusiastic
about opening emails from Richard Holbrooke is not a
crime of lese majesté, of high treason.
Along the lines of Obama’s reference to maintaining
civilian control of the military, mainstream political
analysts and commentators made strained allusions to
Abraham Lincoln’s firing of General George McClellan
during the American Civil War and Harry Truman’s
cashiering General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean
War.
The freelance reporter whose story was the occasion
for McChrystal’s departure, Michael Hastings, said
after McChrystal’s dismissal that “he believed the
story would last for 72 hours and then McChrystal and
his staff would get back to business as usual.” [3]
Not so much a matter of changing commanders in
midstream as it is throwing overboard the captain of a
ship threatened with being capsized in a tempest.
That the commander of all foreign military forces
in the world’s most extensive military conflict, one
that involves over 50 nations [4] on six continents
and will shortly reach its ninth year, would be
dismissed within two days of a leaked report from an
entertainment magazine (two days before its
publication) is to all outward appearances a
dramatically disproportionate response, one that
itself could be branded intemperate.
There were and are other, more substantial,
dynamics at play.
Another American general who left his last post
under a cloud, former U.S. European Command chief and
NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark – never one
to be shy of the limelight or a television camera –
appeared on CNN the evening of McChrystal being dumped
and dutifully echoed the official post-purge position:
“I think that there are lines you can’t cross and I
think there’s responsibilities that you have to uphold
as a senior commander.”
In reference to Central Command head David Petraeus
taking charge of 150,000 U.S. and NATO (and in truth
what there is of an Afghan National Army) troops,
Clark added a revealing item which may prove to be the
main intention behind and result of McChrystal’s
dismissal: “I don’t know what the timetable means.
Whether it means you’ve got to pull a brigade out or
four brigades out or half the troops out or, you know,
an outpost out, I’m not quite clear.”[5]
With mid-term congressional elections in early
November and Obama’s presumed reelection bid two years
later, Petraeus’ appointment may have a distinctly
political dimension. Either simply an effort to put a
new face on a disastrous affair or to signal a shift
in war tactics. But if meant to boost the election
prospects of Democratic candidates this year and Obama
in 2012, the White House may get more than it
bargained for.
A graduate of the West Point Military Academy like
McChrystal, Petraeus has been the subject of rumours –
for at least three years – that he intends to run for
the U.S. presidency, and in fact has been deftly
positioning himself for just that eventuality.
Presented as the hero of the war in Iraq who as
commander of Multi-National Force – Iraq (MNF-I) from
January of 2007 to September of 2008 presided over the
so-called surge during that interim – and ballyhooed
as the father of a Petraeus Doctrine at the time – his
reprising that role in Afghanistan could enhance his
appeal as a war hero cum man on horseback in 2012,
much as the aforementioned Wesley Clark attempted
(with scant success but having tested the waters) in
2004.
Commentators have alluded to the 1962 novel (and
its cinematic adaptation two years later) Seven Days
in May [6] lately in reference to outgoing Afghan war
commander Stanley McChrystal. The parallel may more
properly suit Petraeus.
When he assumed command of the Multi-National Force
– Iraq in the very month that President George W. Bush
launched the Iraq surge with the announcement of
20,000 more troops to be deployed there, Petraeus took
control of all foreign occupation forces in the
country, not only from the U.S. and Britain but also
from dozens of other nations, primarily at the time 20
new NATO and NATO candidate and other partner states
from Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus and Central
Asia: Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Bulgaria,
Croatia, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Georgia,
Hungary, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia,
Moldova, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and
Ukraine.
All of the above except for Kazakhstan and Moldova
(for the time being), with new nation Montenegro
added, have troops assigned to NATO in Afghanistan.
The war in and occupation of Iraq provided Petraeus
and the Pentagon an unprecedented opportunity to
integrate the armed forces of dozens of nations –
others included Australia, New Zealand, South Korea,
Mongolia and Singapore, which now have troops in
Afghanistan as well – for purposes of weapons and
combat interoperability and for NATO membership and
assorted partnerships under wartime conditions.
[From left to right: General James Jones, then NATO
Supreme Allied Commander and now White House National
Security Advisor, NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop
Scheffer and Lieutenant General David Petraeus, Chief
Office of Security Transition-Iraq at a press
conference for the launching of the NATO Training
Mission-Iraq in December of 2004. NATO files.]
Preceding his appointment as commander of the
Multi-National Force – Iraq in 2007, Petraeus was
named both head of the Multi-National Security
Transition Command — Iraq and the first commander of
the NATO Training Mission-Iraq in 2004.
Before that, while a brigadier general, he served
in Bosnia in the early years of this decade as part of
NATO’s Operation Joint Forge and as Assistant Chief of
Staff for Operations for the NATO-led Stabilization
Force and Deputy Commander of the U.S. Joint
Interagency Counter-Terrorism Task Force.
In recognition of his role in Iraq, in April of
2008 Secretary of Defense Gates announced that
President Bush was nominating Petraeus to head up U.S.
Central Command (CENTCOM), which post he took up on
October 31, 2008.
The U.S. is the only nation in history to divide
the world into military commands. CENTCOM’s area of
responsibility includes, in addition to Afghanistan
and Iraq, other nations beset by armed conflicts like
Pakistan and Yemen, and all of the Middle East (except
for Israel), the Persian Gulf (including Iran) and
Central Asia. Egypt is the only African nation left to
CENTCOM, with Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya,
Seychelles, Somalia and Sudan ceded to the new U.S.
Africa Command, though Lebanon and Syria were
transferred from European Command to Central Command
in 2004.
In the past twenty months Petraeus has not only
overseen ongoing military operations in Afghanistan,
Iraq and Yemen and supported those in Pakistan, but
has also worked assiduously at building a far-reaching
nexus of military overflights, land routes and transit
bases from the Persian Gulf and the South Caucasus to
Central Asia for the Afghan war.
He will now step down as head of CENTCOM to command
150,000 U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan.
The lionization of Petraeus began before the fact
regarding the dual Afghan commands and within hours of
his announced appointments, with the predictable
claque clapping like trained seals.
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen
guaranteed that Washington’s 27 partners in the
military alliance would sheepishly keep their own
counsel: “After all, they are only supplying 25
percent of the alliance’s 130,000 troops in
Afghanistan. They will accept Mr Obama’s step, be it
with some disappointment because they generally agreed
that McChrystal was doing a good job.” [7] Hardly a
passionate endorsement of the organization he heads
and which is touted as a “military alliance of
democratic states in Europe and North America.”
The Washington Post’s David Ignatius regaled his
readers with a glowing panegyric entitled “Gen. David
Petraeus: The right commander for Afghanistan,” which
is replete with these specimens of fawning puffery:
- Gen. David Petraeus didn’t sign on as the new
Afghanistan commander because he expects to lose.
- Obama has doubled down on his bet, much as George
W. Bush did with his risky surge of troops in Iraq
under Petraeus’s command.
- [A]s I’ve heard him say: “The thing about winners
is that they know how to win.”
- Petraeus is, among other things, the most deft
political figure I’ve seen in uniform. In just two
years he has gone from being Bush’s go-to general to
Obama’s. [8]
The piece goes on in that vein for an
unconscionably, an insufferably, long time.
It is emblematic of the peculiarly American art of
concocting an overnight hero mythos. The identical
technique was exhibited a year ago when Stanley
McChrystal was promoted to general to take command of
the Afghan war.
Petraeus, like the fox in the fable of Aesop, may
want to think twice about entering a lion’s den in
which he sees footprints enter but not come out.
Unless political ambition blinds him to the evidence.
1) http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/02/09/eveningnews/main6191709.shtml
2) Xinhua News Agency, June 24, 2010
3) New York Daily News, June 24, 2010
4) Afghan War: NATO Builds History’s
First Global Army
Stop NATO, August 9, 2009
http://rickrozoff.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/afghan-war-nato-builds-historys-first-global-army
5) CNN, June 23, 2010
6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_Days_in_May
7) Radio Netherlands, June 24, 2010
8) Washington Post, June 24, 2010 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/23/AR2010062304005.html?hpid=opinionsbox1
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