Afghanistan Mission Creep Watch - The Q Rating Version Posted by Michael Cohen

I’m doing my best to understand Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s big piece in the Washington Post today about the firing of Gen. David McKiernan and his replacement by Lt. Gen Stanley McChrystal. Part of the problem is that I’ve read the article a few times and I’m still not exactly clear as to why McKiernan was fired:

Gates and Mullen had been having doubts about McKiernan since the beginning of the year. They regarded him as too languid, too old-school and too removed from Washington. He lacked the charisma and political savvy that Gen. David H. Petraeus brought to the Iraq war.

Also there was this:

But back in Washington, McKiernan was increasingly seen as too deferential to NATO. By November, when it became clear that the Europeans would not be sending more troops, senior officials at the Pentagon wanted him to focus on making better use of the existing NATO forces -- getting them off bases and involved in counterinsurgency operations. "He was still doing the NATO-speak at a time when Gates and Mullen were over it," a senior military official at the Pentagon said.

From an operational standpoint it's a bit more difficult to find a huge divide between McKiernan and McChrystal's approach to the war in Afghanistan. McKiernan had recommended troop increases back in the Fall of 2008, he put in place procedures to limit civilian casualties and he had at least begin to shift the focus of the US mission in Afghanistan to counter-insurgency before his replacement arrived on the scene. It does seem as though McChrystal has acted on these measures with more of a vengeance, but operationally there isn't a great divide here.

What does come across in this piece, however, is that the predominate reason that McChrystal was the first wartime theater commander to be fired since General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 was that he didn't do a good job of playing the Washington game:

"Blame General Petraeus," a senior Defense Department official said. "He redefined during his tour in Iraq what it means to be a commanding general. He broke the mold. The traditional responsibilities were not enough anymore. You had to be adroit at international politics. You had to be a skilled diplomat. You had to be savvy with the press, and you had to be a really sophisticated leader of a large organization. When you judge McKiernan by Petraeus's standards, he looked old-school by comparison.

Now we're getting somewhere - and Chandrasekaran provides a nice example of why McChrystal is more Petraeus-like:

Before McChrystal left Washington, Gates asked him to deliver an assessment of the war in 60 days. Instead of summoning a team of military strategists to Kabul, McChrystal invited Washington think-tank experts from across the ideological spectrum.

The experts gave McChrystal a 20-page draft report that calls for expanding the Afghan army, changes in the way troops operate and an intensified military effort to root out corruption. There were few revolutionary ideas in the document, but McChrystal may have received something far more important through the process: allies in the U.S. capital, on the political left and right, to talk about the need for more troops in Afghanistan -- in advance of his assessment to Gates, which will probably be submitted this month. "He understands the need to engage Washington, and he's willing do so in a creative way," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was part of the team.

Aha! So apparently, the most important tool for a theater commander is not only how you play the Washington game, but how you sell it to a reluctant electorate. Let's call it the Schwarzkopf-ization of American generalship. Certainly, from this narrow perspective the move makes sense. There is little question that to date McChrystal has shown himself to be the much politically savvier general; better at working DC, better at working the press etc.

But does that make the war in Afghanistan any more winnable - or does it just increase the likelihood that US troops will remain there for a longer period of time in pursuit of a dubious mission? For example, McChrystal is continuing the improved training mission that McKiernan initially implemented, but it doesn't mean the ANA and ANP are going to be trained any faster. And, I'm not sure how changing generals is going to help rectify the situation of that pesky Afghan Taliban safe haven across the border in Pakistan.

Apparently I'm alone in my fear, because as we are told McKiernan's firing is "a story of the president's top military leaders, who are betting that this one personnel decision, above all others, will set in motion a process that reverses U.S. fortunes in Afghanistan."

Oy!