McChrystal's Wrong-Headed Focus Posted by Michael Cohen

Yesterday I wrote with disappointment about the focus of COIN-advocates on reducing civilians casualties rather than targeting the enemy. Today in his testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee, Lt. Gen McChystal shows more of this wrong-headed approach to American interests in Afghanistan. (Courtesy of Spencer Ackerman).

On Afghanistan strategy: “A resilient Taliban insurgency, increasing levels of violence, lack of governance capacity … lack of development in key areas” threatens the “future of Afghanistan and regional stability.” Providing the Afghan people “with an opportunity to shape their future” requires a “firm commitment” from the United States. “The challenge is considerable,” and “there is no simple answer.” McChrystal advocates a “holistic counterinsurgency campaign.” Casualties “will increase” but “with the appropriate resources, time, sacrifice and patience, we will prevail.”

But here's the thing, the United States is not prepared to devote the time, sacrifice and patience to meeting this probably unreachable goal. Churchillian rhetoric sounds great in congressional testimony but the simple reality is that US forces in Afghanistan are operating under a constrained time frame. Gates has spoken about the need to see progress in a year. Our focus needs to be degrading the enemy, not some amorphous counter-insurgency goal.

And there's more:

“Central to counterinsurgency is protecting the people,” he said. . . Effectiveness is measured in “the number of Afghans shielded from violence.” Developing Afghan military and police capacity will be his top security effort. “There will be mistakes” along the way, McChrystal said.

I'm all for developing Afghan military and police capacity - and I'm glad to see that McChrystal is focused on this goal, but that isn't the issue here.

Indeed, everyone it seems is most interested in McChrystal's possible role in detainee abuse or his actions during the Pat TIllman scandal, but what Congress really needs to be addressing  is the misguided focus of our new commander in Afghanistan that places protecting civilians ahead of killing the enemy. Quite simply, it's no way to fight a war or protect the country's vital national interests.

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I don't really think there is a degrading the enemy strategy available to us independent protecting the Afghan population. The enemy isn't some set number of people that can just be killed without worrying about replacements. If there was some sort of quick win available, even with Afghanistan's lower force and resource levels vis-a-vie Iraq, I rather think we'd have taken it.

If you're calling for a withdrawal strategy with enemy degradation components, that's reasonable. Not how I'd do things with Afghanistan but in some ways it is similar to how I think we should handle Iraq. But I don't think there isn't some sort of enemy degradation mission we can actually accomplish, instead it's a matter of just doing what we can while we leave.

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