The General Vs. The President - Update

Update:

While this original blog post assumed some connivance by the "media", this could be either White House or Military connivance. Here's an article detailing some interesting speculation of how and why the story was leaked.

McChrystal is deadlocked in a battle with Obama to get the resources to carry out the mission the President directed only five months ago. Obama is indecisive - balking - perhaps changing his mind. The General is frustrated, perhaps angry, and growing desperate to not lose excessive troops and fail in the mission. Any manager caught in the catch 22 of being responsible for completing a project and having essential resources withheld midstream can relate to the General's problem. I still believe it is a waste of lives, time, and money to attempt to change the "hearts and minds" of those dark-age souls. There is nothing to build on. The most we need to do is empower the CIA and special forces to keep an ear to the ground over there to track what is brewing that could directly impact our nation.

Here is my original post...

Why does the Washington Post have this much information? Here are my side bar comments to the latest Washington Post review of a confidential US war strategy document:

McChrystal: More Forces or 'Mission Failure'
Top U.S. Commander For Afghan War Calls Next 12 Months Decisive

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, September 21, 2009

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict "will likely result in failure," according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

An urgent, confidential assessment? Hardly. How do these things get “obtained?”

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: "Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) -- while Afghan security capacity matures -- risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

This is great. The public and the enemy get to review this confidential assessment at the same time as the President. Peachy!

…he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.

“Corrupt government?” Sounds familiar. Corruption is relative, like everything else - a matter of degree. The Afghan government must be really corrupt.

He provides extensive new details about the Taliban insurgency, which he calls a muscular and sophisticated enemy that uses modern propaganda and systematically reaches into Afghanistan's prisons to recruit members and even plan operations.

Muslims “recruit members” from within the prisons? They do the same thing in US prisons. Why should it be any different in Afghanistan?

McChrystal's assessment is one of several options the White House is considering. His plan could intensify a national debate in which leading Democratic lawmakers have expressed reluctance about committing more troops to an increasingly unpopular war. Obama said last week that he will not decide whether to send more troops until he has "absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be."

After 8 years in Afghanistan our leaders don’t have clarity about what the strategy is going to be? After 9 months in office, our President doesn’t have absolute clarity about what the strategy is going to be? How bazaar is that? How can we explain that? For starters, I take a look at the Obama book “The Audacity of Hope.” In it he speaks of his Muslim heritage, but not once in the extensive multi-hundred entry index to that book does the word “Islam” or “Muslim” appear. And nothing in the context of the reasons we are in the midst of two wars. This gives me a sense that he is either oblivious to the nature and threat of that fascist movement or he is deceptively part of it.

The commander has prepared a separate detailed request for additional troops and other resources, but defense officials have said he is awaiting instructions before sending it to the Pentagon.

Sounds like a General butt protection measure. Don’t send what he really recommends until the recommendation is approved. That’s creepy. Sound eerily like the Vietnam methodology: another freakin’ political war. If that’s the case, get our asses out of there! Hussein Obama has already declared he has no intention of winning.

Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations. A declassified version of the document, with some deletions made at the government's request, appears at washingtonpost.com.

Asked to “withhold brief portions of the assessment?” It sounds like the trustworthy Post has the entire classified document. Again, how do they do that? Why?

Here is the essence of the decision to be made. McChrystal makes the distinction:

McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory. Most starkly, he says: "[I]nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced."

“Without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced.” From the sounds of the “new strategy” the mission shouldn’t be resourced either. The new strategy is to spend our resources (several hundred billion over the next several years) on making the Muslims in Afghanistan happy. The problem with that is we have to become like them for them to become happy. Becoming “like them” means we have to become Muslim or become subservient to their religion, their culture, and their Sharia law.

How about a different “new strategy.” Learn about the historical fascist teachings of Islam and understand that that “religion” is in the midst of an Islamic reformation that is reinstituting Muhammad’s original teachings and militaristic practices of the dark ages. Then decide what we want to stand up for – decide whether our own values and religions and culture are worth standing up for and fighting for. This is where our confusion lies. Only after we do that will we have the motivation to really defend and fight for what we believe in. Until then, we our pi—ing our resources away.

We have a lot to do to keep our own house in order. We don’t even have enough understanding of Islam to do that.

There is a lot more to the Post article. Read it here.