Paul Krassner : Why Firing the General Was an Act of God

Cartoon by Larson / The Far Side / The Mutt's Nuts.
Why firing the General
Was an act of God

By Paul Krassner / The Rag Blog / June 25, 2010

1. The volcano in Iceland was considered an Act of God.
2. Smoke from the volcano caused countless flights to be canceled.
3. The Rolling Stone correspondent was stuck in Paris.
4. Embedded there, he hung around with talkative drinkers.
5. They revealed stuff while forgetting it was being told to a reporter.
6. He wrote in his article what they had said.
7. The fact checkers verified those statements.
8. The article was shown to Barack Obama.
9. Whether he fired McChrystal or didn’t, Republicans would criticize.
10. The president fired the general, ultimately due to an Act of God.

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Harvey Wasserman : Fire McChrystal and Get Out of Afghanistan. Now.

Rolling Stone: The Runaway General. Image from ABC News.
Fire General Stanley McChrystal and
Get out of Afghanistan NOW

By Harvey Wasserman / The Rag Blog / June 22, 2010

President Obama must fire General Stanley McChrystal and get out of Afghanistan... for starters.

There is much more at stake here than meets the eye.

History is full of generals with deep contempt for democracy.

General McChrystal has a very particular significance. Last year, as Obama weighed the Afghan situation, McChrystal circumvented him entirely. In an act of profound public contempt, the general went directly to the world media with a high-profile campaign that was entirely inappropriate to a civilian democracy.

He should have been fired right then and there.

But McChrystal used the brass on his chest to sell the nation a bill of goods -- that the war in Afghanistan could be "won." It would be "difficult," of course, requiring "sacrifice."

But exactly what "victory" meant, and how that would make the United States safer, more just and prosperous, was never clear.

What WAS clear was who would die and who would pay.

But with the corporate media lapping up his every word, McChrystal upstaged the numerous political, strategic, financial, and military experts who disagreed with him.

The plunge into the Graveyard of Great Powers was by no means a consensus decision among either the experts or the public.

McChrystal became to Afghanistan what William Westmoreland was to Vietnam -- the go-to guy on the plunge to war. The results have been catastrophic.

Like Westmoreland, McChrystal has been proven dead wrong on just about everything. The war's only foreseeable "accomplishment" is to drain our treasury and weaken our nation. We hear snippets of "progress" here and insider reports of "victories" there, and lately a recycled old story about vast mineral wealth. But it's deja vu all over again, a ghastly Southwest Asian rerun of the debacle in Southeast Asia.

Cover of Stars and Stripes, June 22, 2010. Image from SF Gate.

Stanley McChrystal has failed as a general, and as a citizen.

It would be easy to say his comments as they appear in Rolling Stone are an aberration, that he was caught off-guard expressing his contempt for the President, the Vice President and the rest of us.

But in this day and age, that may be naive. We have a volunteer army and a President inclined to avoid definitive decisions. Our rights as civilians were not easily won. To preserve them, as Jefferson said, we must be "eternally vigilant."

The Roman republic disintegrated when generals began disobeying elected leaders and taking personal control of their armies.

In the midst of our own Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln fired his contemptuous, incompetent General George McClellan and eventually replaced him with Ulysses S. Grant, who won a war worth winning. McClellan ran against Lincoln for the presidency in 1864. He lost. Thankfully, he had no personal army to overturn the decision.

During the Korean War, General Douglass MacArthur contemptuously disobeyed President Harry Truman. Truman resolutely fired him. As he told TIME Magazine at the time:

I fired him [MacArthur] because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President... I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.

It took another General, Dwight Eisenhower, to bring finally the troops home. But come they did.

Barack Obama cannot let Stanley McChrystal return to Afghanistan. He needs to fire him immediately, and replace him with someone who will end that war.

The stakes we can see are huge. The ones we can't may be even greater.

[Harvey Wasserman's History of the United States is at www.harveywasserman.com, along with Solartopia! Our Green-Powered Earth.]

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An Unaccustomed Truth : Commander McChrystal Admits to Afghan Atrocities

Gen. Stanley McChrystal. Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta / AP.
Times quotes Afghansistan commander:
American atrocities turn Afghans into insurgents

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat.” -- Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal

By Chris Floyd / March 29, 2010

Well, John the Baptist after torturing a thief
Looks up at his hero the Commander-in-Chief
Saying, 'Tell me great hero, but please make it brief
Is there a hole for me to get sick in?'
-- Bob Dylan, Tombstone Blues

One can only assume that the regular editors of the New York Times were all out at a party, or left early for a weekend in the Hamptons, or something -- but somehow, the paper published a front webpage story that stated -- without the usual thousand excuses and extenuations -- that American troops are routinely slaughtering Afghan civilians at checkpoints. What's more, the story unequivocally ties the civilian killings to the "surge" ordered by the noble Nobel Peace laureate, Barack Obama.

Here's what the Times says:

American and NATO troops firing from passing convoys and military checkpoints have killed 30 Afghans and wounded 80 others since last summer, but in no instance did the victims prove to be a danger to troops, according to military officials in Kabul.

And what is the paper's authority for this astounding admission of atrocity? Not the usual "unnamed sources" or "senior official in a position to have knowledge of the situation," but none other than Obama's hand-picked commander on the Af-Pak front, General Stanley "Black Ops" McChrystal his own self:

“We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat,” said Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who became the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan last year. His comments came during a recent videoconference to answer questions from troops in the field about civilian casualties.

Let's repeat the much-media-lauded general's statement again: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." Now, what would the authorities say if you or I shot "an amazing number of people who have never proven to be a threat?" Why, they would call us murderers -- even mass murderers. Yet this is precisely what "the senior American and NATO commander in Afghanistan" has just declared, on videotape.

The story goes on to make the extraordinarily straight -- and indisputable -- point that these wanton killings of civilians who have never even "proven to be a threat" is fanning the very "insurgency" (which is the Beltway term of art for any resistance to American military presence") whose quelling is the ostensible reason for the Laureate's "surge" in the first place:

Failure to reduce checkpoint and convoy shootings, known in the military as “escalation of force” episodes, has emerged as a major frustration for military commanders who believe that civilian casualties deeply undermine the American and NATO campaign in Afghanistan.

Many of the detainees at the military prison at Bagram Air Base joined the insurgency after the shootings of people they knew, said the senior NATO enlisted man in Afghanistan, Command Sgt. Maj. Michael Hall.

“There are stories after stories about how these people are turned into insurgents,” Sergeant Major Hall told troops during the videoconference. “Every time there is an escalation of force we are finding that innocents are being killed,” he said.

The story even states plainly that the official figures of admitted killing of unthreatening civilians -- already unconscionably high -- might not be the true extent of these atrocities:

Shootings from convoys and checkpoints involving American, NATO and Afghan forces accounted for 36 civilian deaths last year, down from 41 in 2008, according to the United Nations. With at least 30 Afghans killed since last June in 95 such shootings, according to military statistics, the rate shows no signs of abating.

And those numbers do not include shooting deaths caused by convoys guarded by private security contractors. Some tallies have put the total number of escalation of force deaths far higher.

A spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, Zemary Bashary, said private security contractors sometimes killed civilians during escalation of force episodes, but he said he did not know the number of instances.

The story also presents an example of one slaughter of civilians, and shows how it leads directly to the rise of resistance against the American military presence:

One such case was the death of Mohammed Yonus, a 36-year-old imam and a respected religious authority, who was killed two months ago in eastern Kabul while commuting to a madrasa where he taught 150 students.

A passing military convoy raked his car with bullets, ripping open his chest as his two sons sat in the car. The shooting inflamed residents and turned his neighborhood against the occupation, elders there say.

“The people are tired of all these cruel actions by the foreigners, and we can’t suffer it anymore,” said Naqibullah Samim, a village elder from Hodkail, where Mr. Yonus lived. “The people do not have any other choice, they will rise against the government and fight them and the foreigners. There are a lot of cases of killing of innocent people.”

Finally, the story depicts McChrystal -- again, the handpicked commander of the commander-in-chief -- stating flatly when it comes to the widely ballyhooed "counterinsurgency doctrine" that is supposedly now governing the military occupation of Afghanistan, the right hand does not know what the left hand is doing. In other words, it's a full-scale, four-star FUBAR:

More recently, General McChrystal moved to bring nearly all Special Operations forces in Afghanistan under his control. NATO officials said concern about civilian casualties caused by these forces was partly behind the decision, along with the need to better coordinate units and ensure that local commanders were aware of what was happening.

One unit could be doing counterinsurgency, while another carried out “a raid that might in fact upset progress,” General McChrystal explained during the videoconference.

Beyond the bare facts reported by the story -- i.e., the top American commanders acknowledge that their forces are killing scores of innocent civilians who pose no threat to the occupiers, and that their own incompetent policies are actually breeding more hatred and resistance -- there is also the astonishing circumstance that we have a story on the Laureate's "good war" in Afghanistan that is almost entirely nothing but bare facts.

Of course, the story appeared late on a Friday, and will no doubt disappear down the memory hole in short order... Still, I must admit that when I read the piece, I honestly did a double-take; I thought it was a hoax -- or perhaps a hack. Not because the story seemed implausible -- but precisely because it didn't, and because it was shorn of most of the self-serving, empire-justifying bullshit that surrounds accounts of the "Peace Prize Surge."

Again, just think of it, let it sink in, attend to the word of the commander: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." Again: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat." Again: “We have shot an amazing number of people, but to my knowledge, none has ever proven to be a threat."

Again: what do you call it when innocent, unarmed, defenseless people who "have never proven to be a threat" are gunned down in cold blood? What do you call such an act?

Source / Empire Burlesque

[A version of the Times article also appeared in the print edition.]

Thanks to Fran Hanlon / The Rag Blog

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McChrystal Clear : More Boots on the Ground

Gen. Stanley McChrystal: Repeating the cliches.
Do the numbers:
500,000 troops for Pashtunistan?

McChrystal repeats the clichés of classic counterinsurgency... American generals used the same vintage phrases in Vietnam, where efforts to 'protect the population' led to forcing rural peasants into fortified 'strategic hamlets.'

By Steve Weissman / October 8, 2009

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, talks of winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people. He sees the need to get beyond standard military thinking and understand the political, religious, social and economic context. He also knows that kicking down doors, destroying homes and killing civilians turns the Afghans against us and creates more insurgents than we could ever kill.

"If the people are against us, we cannot be successful," McChrystal told CBS's "60 Minutes." "If the people view us as occupiers and the enemy, we can't be successful and our casualties will go up dramatically."

In his report to President Obama and in endless interviews, the four-star general talks about persuading the Afghans, protecting them and making them secure from the Taliban. "Our every action must help secure, mobilize and support the Afghan people and their government to defeat the insurgency and establish effective governance."

How to "establish effective government" in a country that has never known one, McChrystal does not say. Nor does he tell us how he would do it with an Afghan leadership made up of war lords, drug barons and a president -- Hamid Karzai -- who won re-election by creating hundreds of phony polling stations and stuffing ballot boxes in wholesale fashion.

Undaunted, McChrystal repeats the clichés of classic counterinsurgency, or COIN, as refurbished by his boss, Gen. David Petraeus, head of Central Command. American generals used the same vintage phrases in Vietnam, where efforts to "protect the population" led to forcing rural peasants into fortified "strategic hamlets."

With only slight variations of emphasis, French generals spoke the same lingo earlier in Vietnam and Algeria, while British generals became the gurus of counterinsurgency from Malaya to Kenya to Cypress. In these conflicts, one problem stands out: The counterinsurgents most often lost, as did earlier invaders in Afghanistan, from Alexander the Great to the British Raj to the former Soviet Union.

But why let all this history get in the way? "Each historical moment is different," the learned Obama warned us with a flourish from the Greek philosopher Heraclitus. "You never step into the same river twice."

Forget history, then, and stick with military thinking. The new counterinsurgency manual that General Petraeus produced calls for "a range of 20 to 25 counterinsurgents for every 1000 residents" in the area of operations. Afghanistan has a population of some 30 million, which would require 600,000 to 750,000 counterinsurgents, including American, allied and Afghan troops.

Frederick Kagan, the neo-conservative military strategist who advises both Petraeus and McChrystal, talks of limiting our counterinsurgency to the Pashtun areas of Afghanistan, leaving the Tajiks, Hazaras, Uzbeks, and other of the country's ethnic minorities to fend for themselves. Kagan estimates a Pashtun population of some 16 million, which would bring the counterinsurgent troops needed down to somewhere between 320,000 and 400,000.

Either way, having enough troops in no way guarantees victory. But, according to Pentagon doctrine, having too few would make it almost impossible to subdue a determined insurgency, especially in Afghanistan's mountainous terrain.

America now has some 68,000 troops in Afghanistan. Obama has already authorized another 21,000, and General McChrystal is asking for 40,000 more. This would bring the American commitment to 129,000. Allied troops number 35,000, and the Afghans currently have 88,000 soldiers and 82,000 police. This would bring the total to 334,000, if McChrystal counts on the Afghan forces, which most experts do not. Washington is asking for more troops from our reluctant allies, while McChrystal plans to increase the Afghan total to 400,000 by 2014.

Would this be enough to win? Secretary of Defense Robert Gates is reportedly having second thoughts. "Even 40,000 more [American] troops don't give you enough boots on the ground to protect the Afghans if the north and west continue to deteriorate," one official told The Wall Street Journal. "That may argue for a different approach."

Gates has previous voiced the fear that too many foreign boots on the ground will only encourage more Afghans to join the insurgents, as the Soviet learned.

Others, like Sen. Russell Feingold, fear that foreign boots in the Pashtun area of Afghanistan will force more of the insurgents into the tribal areas of Pakistan, where they would meld into a population of over 25 million Pashtuns. How many more troops would General McChrystal need then?

[A veteran of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement and the New Left monthly Ramparts,Steve Weissman lived for many years in London, working as a magazine writer and television producer. A former senior editor at Truthout, he now lives and works in France. For previous articles by Steve Weissman on The Rag Blog, go here.]

Source / truthout

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