As the president wraps up his swing across all of the talk shows and collects his Nobel Peace Prize, one gets the sense that we are rapidly approaching a defining moment in the Obama presidency. 9-11 was thrust upon President Bush just nine months into his administration, and President Obama now faces an unwelcome, but completely predictable, dilemma in his first year. The key issue of course is whether the President should resource the McChrsytal strategy or does he listen to his base and deny his general on the ground the troops he believes are needed to win?
When Obama came into office there were 35,000 troops in Afghanistan. Soon there will be 68,000, meaning Obama ordered 33,000 of them into combat. Just 3,000 more and Obama owns the balance.
Even if he doesn’t send the additional 40,000 troops General McChrystal asked for, there’s no doubt that this is his war now. The president may be looking at this the way a relief pitcher views the situation coming into an inning with runners on base. What counts against him and what doesn’t? But as commander in chief, he has to unhinge himself from such personal considerations. He must take off his political hat and listen to the sound advice of his military commanders and the Secretary of Defense.
On that note, as someone who spent a great deal of time on the battlefield and in the homes of many Afghan citizens, as well as some time in the Pentagon, here’s what I would recommend the President do:
1. Do what you said you were going to do. During the campaign you passionately spoke about how the Bush administration took their eye off the ball and did not properly resource the Afghanistan fight. You made a commitment at that time, and later, to resource this war. There is a huge difference between voting (or not) as a back bench, behind the scenes senator and now being the leader of the free world, who must make actual decisions with consequences and accountability linked directly to those decisions. Leadership is a tough business and this may indeed fall into the category of, “be careful what you wish for.” But it is yours, so bow up and press ahead. No matter how hard the impulse, this is a vote from which you cannot abstain.
2. Support your commander. Don’t let General McChrystal’s reputation flap in the wind. This is a man who has fought house to house and delivered significant victories for our nation. Stan McChrystal is the preeminent counter-terrorism expert in the world. Tell your bureaucrat op-ed buddies to back off and quit maligning an American hero. The Taliban and Al Qaeda are watching how you treat your hand picked general leading our troops. Street cred in this part of the world matters hugely. Use your pulpit to back up a commander who needs your support and understand that a commanding general’s first responsibility is to his troops and his country, not to an individual. Realize that McChrystal lives by the Army Creed: Always Place the Mission First, Never Accept Defeant, Never Quit, Never Leave a Fallen Comrade. Not bad guidelines for a commander in chief, either.
3. Resource the McChrystal strategy. General Stan McChrystal is arguably the best warfighter our country has seen since Patton rolled across Europe. I’ve read his plan and it is thorough and meshes with my experience on the ground in Afghanistan. Don’t let politics enter your decision-making. This is the security of the free world we’re talking about. It’s just a bit more important than the Olympics coming to Chicago.
4. Meanwhile…Develop a Grand Strategy. Grand Strategy is a lost art and it means to apply all the elements of national power against a problem set that threatens a vital interest. These wars are being conducted largely on the backs of military men and women with minimal levels of effort from the other departments of the government. Get agriculture, commerce, and treasury significantly involved right away while you simultaneously demand a broad plan for Afghanistan that accounts for strategic interests in Pakistan, Iran, and India first, then the other ‘Stans’ to the north second.
5. Quit wasting time on NATO. NATO is a political organization and the member nations, save a few, will never produce the force necessary commensurate with either our desires or their responsibilities. They are largely irrelevant on the ground in Afghanistan as well. The German military, for example, is minimally useful in the northern provinces. Put enough effort into this to keep what they’ve got there, but nothing more.
6. Put Boots on the Ground in Pakistan. The Pakistan leadership snowed the Bush administration and they will try to snow yours. They are ineffective in the Waziristan, Northwest Frontier, and Baluchistan regions, where Al Qaeda and Taliban hide out and conduct all necessary state functions to wage war. The enemy recruits, mans, trains, equips, deploys and sustains their forces from Pakistan. We need to use special forces on the ground to guide our precision strikes and wreak havoc in these areas to disrupt the sanctuary for the same reason we bombed Dresden in World War II. Without this component, it will be impossible to win in Afghanistan.
7. Price out the Poppy. Right now we have approximately 100,000 NATO troops on the ground in Afghanistan and they don’t eat a single Afghan crop in any of their meals. 300,000 square meals a day could drive a significant portion of this agrarian economy from subsistence farming back to some commercial agriculture and, if done correctly, could yield greater return per bushel than poppy. This is ‘low hanging fruit’, so to speak, and when we tried to initiate the effort during my time there, we had to fight the bureaucracy to get it started. Medical personnel were risk averse, claiming that Afghan crops would be unsafe. This proclamation came about the time of the great spinach scare in our own country. Get your Department of Agriculture to begin to think and act innovatively and support the effort.
8. Be strong and be patient. Because of years of being under-resourced, this war will take considerable effort to get onto the right track. With that considerable effort, great Americans will go forth at your order and put their lives on the line. Many will be killed and wounded as we seek to secure this vital interest.
The courses of action in Afghanistan are simple. We either support the McChrystal strategy or we say it’s not worth it. There is no half measure here. To pretend that the Biden approach is a single course of action and mutually exclusive from the McChrystal approach is ludicrous. In addition to doing everything we see General McChrystal proposing we have to also keep pressure on Pakistan. They are complementary pieces of an overarching strategy. To present them as uniquely different courses of action is disingenuous.
The simple fact is that this is a war we must win. We’ve got exactly the right man on the ground to lead the effort.
All we need now is a decision.
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