Out of the Mouths of Soldiers

Sometimes you have to wonder what people were thinking when they say the things they say. This is particular true if you are in the public eye. Say a politician or maybe an important military commander say in a major theater of combat operations. Like oh I don’t know say Afghanistan.

All I can say is what was General McChrystal thinking. Perhaps even more important what was McChrystal’s staff thinking to say the things they did to the reporter from Rolling Stone. Is having Tin Ear now a major disease like Swine Flu? Unlike Swine Flu, Tin Ear seems to be only affecting people in the public eye. So the public in general is safe from this malady which is a good thing.

Some of the things said sound like something a little kid would say about someone. This one comes to mind:

“Are you asking me about Vice President Biden? Who’s that?” McChrystal is quoted as saying at one point in the article.

“Biden?” chimes in an aide who is seated nearby, and who is not named in the article. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

Bit Me? Really bit me! How sophomoric is that.

Or this one:

The article claims McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

I can understand having these feelings. Being frustrated by not being able to control events like one would want to. That prosecuting a war has to be one of the hardest things to do. That this war has to be unbelievably difficult. That the tension between defeating the enemy while at the same time not reeking havoc on a civilian population must be very difficult. This is especially true when lives are being risked and lost.

What also puzzles me about this is why no one around the general said I don’t think this is a particularly good idea to give this interview and say the things we are saying. And that can apply to all of these types of events when you say to yourself what the hell were these people thinking. The answer is they weren’t really rationally thinking through their actions. They were mad or defensive or upset in some way and said things they shouldn’t have.

In the end it cost the generally his job. And even more importantly it’s going to disrupt the American efforts in Afghanistan.

Supporting Our Troops

Peter King from Sports Illustrated has launched a campaign to help out some of our troops in Afghanistan. King met Army First Sgt. Mike McGuire at a ball game in St. Louis several years back. They struck up a conversation at the game. Peter has kept track of Sgt. McGuire. McGuire will be going to Afghanistan again shortly. From King's column:

I asked Mike last year if there was anything he thought I could do for him and his troops when they deploy. He said it would be nice if the base that will likely be invented for his company -- as are many in remote areas of Afghanistan -- could have some or the comforts that the big bases have: a TV with video games, and weight equipment for the soldiers in the company to use in their downtime. The USO graciously offered to be the accountant for the project, and to collect the money -- and Mike and I agreed that any money raised beyond the $20,000 or so for his company's equipment will be used for other platoons in other remote areas of the war zones.

So far $124,500 has been raised. If you'd like to help out follow this link to the USO website.

I've contributed already and plan to do again.

It is after all the least I can do for their sacrifice.

Afghanistan Moves onto the Stage

In the past few weeks Afghanistan has been slowly moving to center stage.

The election there that turned out to be not much of an election at all. Something like 1 million votes were fraudulently cast for the current president Hamid Karzai. It sounds like there was a great deal of arm twisting but Karzai finally agreed to a run off (the Afghan constitution says there has to be a runoff if no candidate receives 50% of the vote):

Having pushed for a do-over, U.S. officials have even less ability to scold the winner. That winner is likely to be incumbent Karzai, who conceded Tuesday, under heavy international pressure, that a runoff was “legitimate, legal and according to the constitution of Afghanistan.”

Here’s an interesting take from Secretary Gates on the election:

“The outcome of the elections and the problems with the elections have complicated the situation for us. But the reality is, it’s not going to be complicated one day and simple the next,” he said. “We’re going to have to work with this going forward, and I believe the president will have to make his decisions in the context of that evolutionary process.”

The question has to be asked will the election this time around be any different from last time.

As to the war itself well there are decisions to be made. The background for this is of course the failure of the Bush administration for finishing what it started. Instead it spun fantasies about Iraq and then got us into a war there. We took our eyes off of Afghanistan and that’s come back to bite us in the ass.

The debate is on going on what exactly to do. The debate needs to thorough but it needs to be done with some dispatch. General Stanley McChrystal wants an increase of 40,000 troops to help fight the Taliban. This is based on the situation on the ground.

But is also came from a meeting in March that decided on:

>>That conclusion, which was later endorsed by the president and members of his national security team, would become the first in a set of recommendations contained in an administration white paper outlining what Obama called “a comprehensive, new strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.” Preventing al-Qaeda’s return to Afghanistan, the document stated, would require “executing and resourcing an integrated civilian-military counterinsurgency strategy.”<<

But it seems not everyone interpreted this to mean a huge increase in the number of troops:

To some civilians who participated in the strategic review, that conclusion was much less clear. Some took it as inevitable that more troops would be needed, but others thought the thrust of the new approach was to send over scores more diplomats and reconstruction experts. They figured a counterinsurgency mission could be accomplished with the forces already in the country, plus the 17,000 new troops Obama had authorized in February.

Not having everyone on the same page seems to have slowed down the decision process on the part of the Obama administration. As I said before, they need to decide something soon.

The bottom line is we need to finish what we started in Afghanistan but we need to have an idea of what being “finished” is. If not we'll end up like so many countries before us (Soviet Union, Britain etc) that have been sucked into Afghanistan and then spit out years later with the country being in just about the same shape before we came. And that cannot be acceptable.

Obama On The Road

Seems Obama's road trip is turning into an unqualified success. There are a few more days left for him to muff something up but it does not appear that will happen.

John McCain couldn't be more upset at the trip and the coverage that Obama is receiving. McCain first complains that Obama hasn't been to Iraq or Afghanistan and hasn't met with General Petraeus. So when Obama does just that McCain gets all bent out of shape. McCain also gets ticked off at all the coverage Obama is getting. I'm waiting for McCain to start jumping up and down like a five year old saying it's unfair.

As to the notion of a time line or time horizon or a commitment to withdraw troops well it seems the Iraqis are on board for the that:

"We are hoping that in 2010 that combat troops will withdraw from Iraq," spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said after Obama met with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki _ who has struggled for days to clarify Iraq's position on a possible timetable for a U.S. troop pullout.

Iraq's Sunni vice president, Tariq al-Hashemi, said after meeting Obama that Iraqi leaders share "a common interest ... to schedule the withdrawal of American troops."

This comes from a story in the Post.

What's sad is that the draw down of American troops means they in all likelihood they will not be going home but will end up in Afghanistan. Where by the way they are desperately needed to combat a resurgent Taliban. Another thing the Bush administration failed to get right.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out in the campaign.

The Forgotten Forgotten War

If Iraq is the forgotten war, then Afghanistan is the forgotten forgotten war.

Well not any more. In the month of June, there were 28 American soldiers killed in Afghanistan. That's one less than in Iraq. The only thing is that the American force in Afghanistan is one-quarter the size of the force in Iraq. It means Afghanistan is extremely deadly to American forces right now. Most likely it will be for some time to come.

The Taliban is on the move. It kept it's head down for a few years and regrouped and is now at it again. Of course they were able to do this because the US was all caught up in the fight in Iraq. It now seems the military wants to send more troops to Afghanistan but can't because of Iraq.

This from a story in the Post:

"I don't have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been and remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces there."

This statement comes from no less than Navy Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

It says to me we are in trouble. The idea is that, as things improve in Iraq and there's a draw down there, we send those forces to Afghanistan. Some experts think it might take a couple of years to accomplish that. My question is do we have a couple of years to wait. The Taliban certainly won't be waiting a couple of years.

One of the short term ways to solve this problem is to extend the tours of duty of soldiers. See the story here.

The 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit, which is doing combat operations in the volatile south, will stay an extra 30 days and come home in early November rather than October, Marine Col. David Lapan confirmed Thursday.

There are assurances from the Pentagon that there will not be an extension beyond those 30 days. But then again in early May no less than Secretary Gates said "no one has suggested even the possibility of extending that rotation." So this recent assurance should be taken with a grain of salt.

President Bush has stated that there will be a increase in troops sent to Afghanistan in 2009. Of course the details on how that will be accomplished are few.

Once again the lack of proper planning on Iraq is directly impacting our ability to defeat the Taliban, al-Qaida and other militants in Afghanistan. Chalk another one up for the Bush administration.

The idea of moving the troops from Iraq (once things are stable in Iraq) to Afghanistan posses a couple of questions. At what point does the equipment start to give out? How many tours of duty are these soldiers supposed to go through before they get a break? Or our leaders just going to keep using them until they are ground into the dust?

They deserve to be treated better. Most of all they deserve not to be forgotten which unfortunately has happened with the was in Afghanistan.