war

The Runaway General

June 23, 2010 By mario piperni

McChyrstal is out, Petraeus is in. A read of the Rolling Stones story makes it obvious that the President had no choice. Slamming the commander-in-chief, his administration, the civilian authority in Afghanistan as well as NATO allies in the manner he did can lead to only one of two conclusions. McChrystal has an ego beyond measure or he wanted out of his leadership role in a war that cannot be won.

McChrystal/Afghaninstan open thread.

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Filed Under: war Tagged With: afghanistan war, mcchrystal, Obama, political issues, politics

The McChrystal Resignation

June 23, 2010 By mario piperni

It is still unclear whether Gen. McChrystal has offered his resgignation or not but if he has, Olbermann is on to something here in suggesting that the President refuse his offer to resign.

What exactly will the ouster of General McChrystal provoke, in our stupid, under-informed, constantly propagandized America of 2010? Who will be the first to identify McChrystal as a martyr to the evil Obama Administration? How many Americans, still looking for a rationalization to justify their rage at a Democratic president, or a black one, or an intelligent one, will have new fuel to feed their blind hatred?

Keep him, Mr. President. will not merely neuter the political blowback, you will present a front of force, and calm, and intelligence, and a willingness to, dare I use the phrase Sir — a willingness to listen to the Commanders on the ground, even when they shoot off their big brass-covered bazoos.

You can own him, Mr. President, and own the political aftermath, now pregnant with opportunities for your critics. The General can be your voice to speed up the de-escalation. My goodness, he could be your mouthpiece if you suddenly saw the morass for what it is and decided to declare victory and get the hell out now. Who would fight you on that, Sir?

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Filed Under: war Tagged With: afghanistan, mcchrystal, Obama, olbermann, political issues, politics

The Unwinnable War From Hell Takes Another Casualty

June 22, 2010 By mario piperni

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top military commander in Afghanistan, is in hot water over criticism directed at the President and others in the administrations. Two takes…

Joe Klein:

This is an extraordinary man, with the perfect skill set necessary for the mission in Afghanistan: a thorough knowledge of counterinsurgency and deep experience in special operations. But there is another side to McChrystal: he is so focused on his real job that he hasn’t spent sufficient time learning how to play the public relations game. He speaks his mind; in private conversations, I’ve found, he is incapable of fudging the truth. This leads to a certain myopia, an innocence regarding the not-so-brave new world of the media. He spoke his mind during a question and answer session in London last autumn, expressing his skepticism about Vice President Biden’s preference for a smaller force in Afghanistan, with a heavy emphasis on special operations. And now he has been caught by a Rolling Stone reporter, speaking his mind on a number of subjects.

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I suppose he will have to be sacked now. He is not irreplaceable. [...] And it is a real tragedy, because Stanley McChrystal is precisely the sort of man who should be leading American troops in battle.

Andrew Sullivan:

The trouble with appointing Stanley McChrystal to run the Af-Pak war was always his temperament and his history. He is a driven man, strong-headed, amazingly disciplined, extremely able in a limited fashion – and clearly unused to compromise or getting along with people as powerful as he is. Diplomat he is not. As head of JSOC, moreover, he has always regarded himself as above political management, running a part of the military that seems at times to answer to no-one, and that, under Bush and Cheney was unleashed to do whatever it wanted, including, of course, brutal torture in the field, condoned from the very top.
These qualities might have seemed appealing at first for Afghanistan. Here you had a former torturer/badass who had learned by brutal experience that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan cannot be won that way. Converted to counter-insurgency as a philosophy, he was an apostate from the Bush-Cheney approach of “kill, bomb and torture until they embrace human rights” school.

[...]…the McChrystal strategy was a product of hope over experience, and that the arrogance that drove it was part of what had long been wrong with the conduct of both tragically flawed wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I believe Sullivan is correct on the futility of this war.

We cannot win by 2011. And we will never win unless we devote far more resources and many more decades to neo-imperial control than America can afford and than the American and British publics will tolerate. Maybe deploying McChrystal to do his best – and still fail – will be the only way of proving this. Which is why this incident is actually, to my mind, a good thing.

It may help bring this madness to an earlier end.

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Filed Under: war Tagged With: afghanistan war, andrew sullivan, political issues, politics

Opiate Abuse In Afghanistan

May 8, 2010 By mario piperni

Another consequence of war…

The number of American soldiers seeking treatment for opiate abuse has skyrocketed over the past five years, at a time when the U.S. military has been surging forces into the heart of the world’s leading opium producer.

Pentagon statistics obtained by FoxNews.com show that the number of Army soldiers enrolled in Substance Abuse Program counseling for opiates has soared nearly 500 percent — from 89 in 2004 to 529 last year. The number showed a steady increase almost every year in that time frame — but it leaped 50 percent last year when the U.S. began surging troops into Afghanistan. Army troop levels in Afghanistan went from 14,000 as of the end of 2004 to 46,400 as of the end of 2009.

The military is caught between destroying the opium fields which fund the Taliban or leaving them be to not worsen relations with the local population for whom many the opium trade is their only source of income.

In the meantime, the number of dead and wounded increase each day while tens of thousands return home suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and drug abuse issues, both of which often lead to suicide.

War sucks from whichever angle you choose to view it.

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Filed Under: war Tagged With: Drugs, opium, PTSD, war

On War, Taxes and Ducks

December 15, 2009 By mario piperni

Here’s what 1943 government propaganda sounded like. At least they were upfront about it.
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Matt Yglesias gives it some perspective.

Now I’m actually quite glad that we’re not subjected to that kind of propaganda today. But the cartoon does drive home the basic points that war costs money and things that cost money require taxes. Taxes were a hard sell then and they’re a hard sell now. But the way the sale was made in ‘43 was to convince people that the war was worth the cost. These days, politicians seem to feel that the public would refuse to pay for the war if asked plainly. So instead of asking, they try to obscure the cost. It’s not really a tenable situation.

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Filed Under: war Tagged With: Donald Duck, political issues, politics, taxes, war