Mr Obama--This Isn't The Time To Kick Ass!

Rolling Stone magazine living up to its founding tradition as a pillar of the counterculture and deep opponent of the US War in Vietnam is bringing out an article on General Stanley McChrystal which has caused the overly sensitive Nice Young Man From Chicago and his henchmen to go ballistic. As a result General McChrystal has been forced to apologize for saying unkind words about various Team Obama heavyweights and has been recalled to Washington to explain his remarks to SecDef Gates and, presumably, the thin-skinned Obama.

Worse than this recall--which at the least serves to undercut McChrystal's moral authority in theater--the POTUS may well fire the man who has the best chance of pulling something less than total defeat out of the Afghanistan morass. Should Mr Obama take this action either directly or using a safe cut-out such as Secretary Gates or Admiral Mullen, it would constitute a self-inflicted wound with potentially fatal consequences.

In the upcoming profile style article, General McChrystal and his staff are reported to have made less than flattering comments about (1) Vice President Biden, (2) Obama Special Envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke and (3) US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry. Others high in the ranks of Team Obama may have been skewered as well, since only Hilary Clinton was reputedly unscathed. (It is to be hoped that had Mr Gates been the target of a barb or two that his vast experience in Washington has served to cushion their impact.)

The foundation for the critical comments made by either McChrystal or members of his staff resides in the events of last Fall during the unnecessarily prolonged pseudo-debate over the correct American strategy for Afghanistan and the number of additional troops which would be needed to execute that strategy effectively. The Obama orchestrated exercise in foot-dragging was marked by leaked memos, rumors, counter-rumors, and other sorts of typically mean and petty bureaucratic infighting.

It was at this time that Ambassador Eikenberry leaked documents which were critical of McChrystal's request for extra men as well as casting aspersions on both the character and election of Hamid Karzai. To infer that Eikenberry's CYA oriented exercise torqued off General McChrystal and others genuinely seeking a path other than defeat by which to exit Afghanistan would be an exercise in accuracy.

It deserves mention that Ambassador Eikenberry's most undiplomatic excoriation of Afghanistan's president not only hindered General McChrystal but also marked the beginning of the steep and slippery downward slope of Afghan-US relations which has continued to date. The ventilation of frustration and anger with Eikenberry's self-serving act in the presence of a journalist was most unwise, most unfortunate, and most regrettable. But, the basis of the charge was both accurate and fair.

McChrystal and others have been frustrated and angered by Special Envoy Holbrooke as well. Mr Holbrooke has made the mistake of reading and believing his own press releases with the result that he considers himself to be The World's Leading Expert on Hostilities Termination and Conflict Resolution. This preposterously inflated self-assessment is based upon Mr Holbrook's role in brokering the Dayton Peace Accords, which played a less than considerable part in helping bring the ethnic and religiously based violence scarring former Yugoslavia to an end. The hosannas sung to Mr Holbrooke by press and Bill Clinton's White House do not merit Mr Holbrooke's conclusion that he Knows Everything Worth Knowing about both the political and military aspects of interventionary operations. If Mr Holbrooke's emails drip the same smugness and rectitude his remarks on camera and before Congress do, it is easy to see why General McChrystal and his staff are more than a tad annoyed to receive them.

Vice-President Biden is, of course, a cretin. Joe (The Biggest Mouth This Side Of Hugo Chavez) made his intellectually challenged position abundantly clear during the "debate" over AfPak strategy when he seriously proposed that the US withdraw from Afghanistan. At the same time we would cover Pakistan or at least the FATA with horizon-to-horizon swarms of Predators and Reapers so as to snipe al-Qaeda members at very low risk to ourselves.

The fact that this ludicrous idea was not met immediately with gales of derisive laughter but rather was given what appeared to be a respectful hearing in the corridors of power speaks volumes as to the level of strategic and operational thinking (that word used generically only) in the Obama administration. If General McChrystal was called upon to explain to the Policy Level wallahs just what was wrong with War According To Joe, full justification for any number of statements of jocose persiflage is to be found.

Gates and Mullen have engaged in preemptive damage limitation. Both men have severely chastised General McChrystal. This was done, not because the general deserved it but rather in the hopes it might head off some disastrous presidential act of pique.

The word on the street is President Obama likes everything "nicey-nicey" around him. Only the POTUS is allowed to have a temper tantrum, to show outrage, or, even, to be pissed off. We all know that Mr Obama has been looking for some "ass" to kick.

If the president is not in a hurry to be in the Oval while the US loses the war in Afghanistan, he had best decide that General McChrystal does not possess an ass worthy of kicking.

Why We Will Lose In Afghanistan

No matter how successful the current American and British offensive operations might be in Helmand, at the end of the week it will not matter. It will not matter how effective the US and its co-belligerents are in the new approach of "clear and hold." Neither does the number of Taliban killed or forced to flee to Pakistan or points beyond change the reality that must now be faced.

The US and its allies are doomed to lose.

A brutal truth to accept. Still it is one which must be accepted.

And, so, why the gloom laden conclusion, Geeko?

There are several reasons, bucko. Here they are in a rough order of importance.

We went about the war all wrong from the very first moment, before the boots of the first American hit the dirt of Afghanistan. The Deep Thinkers of the Bush/Cheney administration failed to conceptualise the goal, definition of victory, and theory of victory correctly. The initial failure was potentiated by trying to gain the goal and some attendant simulacrum of victory on the cheap, by "shock and awe" rather than through manpower heavy operations. Then, to make a very bad situation even worse, the administration committed the US to an exercise in "nation building" with the end product being hypothesized as a Western style liberal, pluralistic republic with all the institutions of press, separation of faith and state, autonomous judiciary, and so on that have been so painfully developed here over the course of centuries.

As a result the Taliban and al-Qaeda were never really defeated. They were given time and sanctuary in which to rest, refit, rebuild, and exploit the failures of the Afghan government put in place under the guard of our (foreign) bayonets. The ever dragging inconclusive war tilted more and more in Taliban's favor in part because the lack of manpower required the extensive use of air power. The fast movers and helicopter gunships killed insurgents, but they also and quite inevitably killed civilians as well.

The "economy of force" operations in Afghanistan (to use the ever-so-sanitary language of the Pentagon) also meant the US had insufficient troops to wrest and keep the initiative through active combat operations, provide necessary point defense against suicide bombing attacks or small unit raids, train the Afghan National Forces, and provide support for civil affairs projects.

All of these factors worked together to assist Taliban's resurgence. Also contributing directly to the Taliban breakout in recent months was the attitude and actions of the Pakistani government and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency. Taliban had critical foreign sanctuary and support, a sanctuary and support which the US was loath to publicly denounce until very, very recently.

The Pakistani support and sanctuary are unlikely to abate in the near- or mid-term given the inability or unwillingness of the Pakistani military to acknowledge that India is not the "main enemy." ISI is dancing with the devil in its relation with Taliban, but that will not force any policy change.

Another reason for the coming US defeat is the nature, character, and agenda of the Karzai regime, the regime which took power and kept it under our protection and with our assistance. Karzai, to an extent that would make Nuri al-Maliki in Iraq blush, is an openly aggrandizing seeker after power.

His administration is corrupt. It is inefficient. It is riddled with Taliban sympathisers. Karzai is willing and ready to do anything, absolutely anything at all, to win the upcoming election. From the massively repressive "Family Law" which places Shia women (at the least) back to the days of Taliban but makes the reactionary Islamist clerics smile with satisfied delight to the repeated promises to "control" the foreign troops, Karzai does whatever he can to gain and hold support through the presidential election a month hence.

If re-elected as seems most probable at the moment, Karzai will deliver on some of these promises. Women will be put back in the garbage sack, (Opps! Bad Geek! You mean the burqua) and he will seek to interject himself and his regime into the military chain of command.

He will succeed in this to a significant degree as he can control the pace of development of the Afghan National Forces whose boots must join ours on the ground if "clear and hold" is to be more than one more catchy phrase. Karzai's goal in this is to facilitate "peace talks" with Taliban and the formation of a "government of inclusion."

The usual suspect, ISI, will back him covertly in this effort through its own contacts with Mullah Omar and Company. ISI will be joined in supporting Karzai's search for peace and inclusion by two unusual suspects: The British public and We the People, the American public.

The British are showing a significant war weariness in the face of mounting casualties in the Helmand offensive. This isn't surprising. There seem to be no significant British national interests at stake in the never-ending war. This is not the old British public of Kipling's day which was content to see the bones of its sons bleach on the far marches of empire for obscure reasons of state.

Not even the bracing remarks of Joe Biden regarding the bravery of British troops or his opinion that the "sacrifices are worth it," will alter the declining support for the war in Merrie Old England. The Taliban are not the Nazis. Afghanistan does not rest across a narrow channel from the storied white cliffs of Dover. The shocking realities of 9/11 and 7/7 are now almost as far in the past as the Maggie Thatcher's Great Campaign for the Sheep of Falklands.

The American public is not far behind the British in rejecting the war in Afghanistan as SecDef Gates noted last week. The effort in Afghanistan has lasted as long as the major US involvement in South Vietnam and only the very, very low body count has prevented a wholesale revulsion at the war. (And, the absence of the draft to be sure.)

Our first post-modern president, the Nice Young Man From Chicago, to whom every person's narrative is as valid as any other, has no real stomach for continuing the war in Afghanistan one minute longer than is necessary to proclaim for one reason or another that the US has accomplished its "goals" in the place. He has already taken the first step in that direction.

The forthcoming elections in Afghanistan provide the opportunity for a graceful US defeat. As American "super-diplomat" Richard Holbrooke acknowledges, the elections will not be perfect, anymore, he averred than was that in the US in 2000. Leaving aside this inapt and inept comparison, the Holbrooke position signals that as long as Karzai wins in a more-or-less transparent effort in democracy, the results are just jake with us.

This implies that Karzai will have a free hand to carry out his efforts at brokering a simulacrum of peace with Taliban leading to a government of national reconciliation. At that point Mr Holbrooke will link arms with Karzai and Omar to sing a chorus of "Give Peace A Chance." The Americans will then leave as will the troops of other nations. We will, of course, leave behind a vast pool of money and assorted civilian experts to continue the task of post-war reconstruction.

The US will, at this point, have been defeated. On the up side, as was the case in Vietnam, it is not the formal enemy which defeated us. No. We will have defeated ourselves.

Once again we will have the chance to learn that bad ideas about war bring defeat. But, we will pay no attention to that lesson.

What Did You Expect? An Easy Fight?

More out of Pakistan, which confirms some of the points made in yesterday's post regarding the unwillingness of the government of that country to redeploy significant elements of its regular army to the fight against Taliban. As previously written, this situation will remain unchanged unless and until the Pakistani government can bring itself to trust that India is not going to attack the moment the army is fully engaged against the Islamist jihadists.

The first bite out of Pakistan is the most to be expected. The army and government of Pakistan are pulling very long faces about the American/British effort in Helmand province, Afghanistan. The lads in command are complaining that the new offensive is driving Taliban and al-Qaeda trigger pullers across the line on a map known as the "border." This, the Pakistanis allege, is complicating their efforts in the FATA.

Well. Golly. Gee. Aw shucks.

As water runs down hill so also do guerrillas seek the line of least resistance. This means that in Helmand province for reasons right or wrong, good or ill, Taliban has concentrated its efforts against the British while giving the American Marines the next thing to a free pass in their advances. It also means that given the choice of facing the combination of disciplined fire power and mobility of the British or American forces, the Heroic Warriors Of The One True Faith would much rather slip across the frontier and take on the paramilitary units of the Frontier Corps and the odd regular Pakistani Army unit in the region.

Rather than whine, moan, bitch and complain about the Taliban doing what they must have been expected to do--take on the weakest opponent--the Pakistani government should dispatch the majority of the regular army to the real fighting front. Sitting on their collective duff and making ugly faces at the Indians across the way does nothing to defeat Taliban nor promote the genuine national security of Pakistan.

The fact that the two Waziristans, North and South, are difficult human and geographic terrain for the Pakistani forces to operate in does not obviate the reality that the people and territory of the Warziristans are the place where war must be waged. The FATA generally has never been brought under effective government control. Nor has the central regime ever done anything substantial to promote perceptions of either existential or functional legitimacy among the tribal population of the region.

These twin failures provided the soil necessary for Islamist jihad of the Taliban sort to take root and flourish. It is the up close and personal ability of Taliban to provide a sense of community identity, administer justice, and squash corruption that has brought recruits as well as provided the extensive passive mass support base without which a guerrilla entity cannot survive for long.

Rather than admit that the years of government neglect of and prejudice against the tribals of the two Warziristans might have been responsible for the rapid growth of Taliban, the Pakistani government again took the self-defeating and irresponsible path of blaming the American Predator strikes on Taliban targets in the FATA for the continuation and growth of Taliban support. The intellectual and moral bankruptcy of this approach is highlighted by developments in the contested area of Dir.

In this area as previously in South Waziristan, a civilian militia, which is to say an ad hoc group of pissed off locals, has surrounded and besieged a Taliban group. To finish the job the locals say they need assistance from the Pakistani army. The requested assistance has not been forthcoming.

Two questions are prompted by this development. One is obvious: why is the government not speeding the required troops to the assistance of the armed and angry locals?

The other is not so self-evident but strikes at the heart of the presumed impact of the icky-poo American Predator strikes. If, as the government insists, the American efforts at remote controlled death were both so inaccurate and ill advised as to turn civilian opinion en masse against the government, then why are the locals in both South Waziristan and Dir rising up angry against the jihadists?

The answer to the second question is simply that the locals finally have had a belly full of Taliban. In particular, the locals have had more than enough of Taliban's willingness to kill civilians. To the locals the suicide bombers along with the Taliban stone-throwing, sword-wielding enforcers of Islamist virtue have exhausted the local's patience with the Virtuous Army of the Prophet.

So, the locals have grabbed their guns and made their displeasure known. They also have asked the government--their government, at least in principle--for help.

The government's ear is deafened by two considerations. The first is the distaste in Islamabad for the idea of tribesmen with guns. The second is the paucity of resources the government is willing to commit to ground combat efforts.

As the war in Pakistan widens, Islamabad is once again playing an old, tired game. The name of the game is extortion. The other player in the game is the United States. The game is played this way: You want us to do something? Well, give us something. Like intelligence, ammunition and, most importantly, you give us Predators.

That's right, policy fans. The Pakistani government wants the same horrid machines that the evil Americans use to complicate Pakistani life by wholesale slaughter of innocent civilians caught in the cross hairs on some video screen thousands of miles away. You see, if we kill our own civilians, no one will mind. If you Yanks kill them, then Taliban will lose.

Gosh, who can fail to be convinced with logic like that? There is no way that Pakistan might want Predators for the same reason the government previously wanted F-16s and other platforms as well suited for counterinsurgent operations as a Baptist minister is for playing piano in a whorehouse? Like to use against the real enemy, India?

At the same time as the government of Pakistan wants us to provide more systems which would be useful against India, it wants us to convince India to cooperate with Pakistan in the "common" struggle against terrorism and terrorists. The time has come to explain the meaning of the word "consistency" to the men of the government of Pakistan. The boys just can't get their story straight.

And, that's a fact, Jack.

While we are at it, there are a couple of other points that diplomat extraordinary Richard Holbrooke might elucidate to the Pakistanis. The first point is that Taliban is the one and only existential threat confronting Pakistan. India is a mythic enemy only. It is a useful outside evil on which the government has pinned so many of its failures past, present, and future.

In point of fact had India really, really wanted to end the Kashmir dispute, it could have at any time of its choosing. The same fact still exists, Pakistan's rudimentary nuclear arsenal to the contrary not withstanding. The continuation of Kashmir as an active diplomatic dispute is testimony to India's unwillingness to use war as its instrument of choice.

The second fact of life which Mr Holbrooke or somebody ought to get through to the state-of-denial afflicted Pakistani government is that Taliban has the initiative. It has the ability to exercise horizontal escalation into Baluchistan. It can use urban terror whenever and wherever it chooses. It can avoid contact with the Pakistani forces in FATA. Or, it can attack from a local position of strength and inflict political will damaging casualties on the government forces.

And, those are facts, Jack.

The final ground truth that must be communicated to the boys in Islamabad is that they have grabbed the tiger's tail. They now have only two choices: Kill the tiger. Or, let the tiger eat them.

Whining, moaning, bitching, complaining, blaming the Americans for actually fighting a war in Afghanistan, seeking to extort Predators, or refusing to commit the majority of their ground combat forces instead of simply bombing from on high or blasting from far away are all simply ways to make damn sure the tiger eats them. Killing the tiger means standing there, facing the beast's claws and teeth--and slitting its throat.

That's the final fact, Jack.