GENERAL McCHRYSTAL HAS PLANS FOR AFGHANISTAN

By: Bill D.  Vietnam Veteran

The New York Times Magazine recently had a long article about General Stanley McChrystal, commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan.  The article examined the general’s counterinsurgency plan for “success”.  The Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer recently claimed that General McChrystal is the world’s foremost counterterrorism expert because in his previous job in Iraq “he killed thousands of bad guys.”  (How many “bad guys” do they have in Iraq?)

A picture in the Times article showed that the general has Ranger and Special Forces patches on his sleeve.  These are very select units.  It means he is also airborne qualified.  General McChrystal also runs every day and is, according to one report, “a fitness nut”. He is strong and brave.  These may be qualities that are important to him, and that’s fine.  But for our country, the more important questions are:  is he compassionate and is he wise.?  Because strength and bravery without compassion and wisdom are worse than useless, they are destructive.  Is General McChrystal a destructive man?  I believe so.

If you read the N.Y.Times article carefully and critically, what comes across most strongly is that the general wants to win.  But what does he want to win?  He says he wants to win the military struggle by protecting the civilian population from the Taliban, by building up the Afghan Army and Police so that they can take over from our soldiers, and by convincing Taliban fighters to come over to the government side.  This is a formula for failure.

General McChrystal has been given the power of life and death over millions of Afghans.  Is he wise enough to use that power?  The answer appears to be “No.”  Does he know what the Afghan people want or need?  Has he asked?  Or is he just another in a long line of Americans whose chief export is arrogance?

The main U.S. goal is said to be getting the population on our side.  We have spent eight years not following through on this often stated goal.  General McChrystal is not following through on it yet, and his request for 40,000- 85,000 more troops shows that winning over the people is just a sound bite for him.  The plan offers nothing to the Afghan people except more fighting and dying.  Some Afghans will be protected while others will be left exposed.  General McChrystal wants to build up the Afghan security forces.  That will only put the people under the control of a corrupt force working for one of the most corrupt and brutal governments in the world.  The criminals, warlords and drug-runners surrounding President Hamid Karzai are, according to Ann Jones in a recent article, as cruel and anti-woman as the Taliban, but they are less disciplined in their fanaticism.  U.S. analysts and military commanders love to talk about “stabilizing” the country, but what are they planning on stabilizing:  misogyny, injustice,  hunger, homelessness, and early death?

What have we done for the Afghan people over the last eight years?  They are suffering from extremes of homelessness, the lack of basic necessities of life, and violence  We have spent over $200 billion, 90% of which has been for military spending.  Most of the 10% that is supposed to be for aid and reconstruction has been misspent or stolen.  We have supported Hamid Karzai, a man who has as much legitimacy as Diem did in South Vietnam.  The fighting itself creates wounded and dying people, but are we providing for those who are suffering?  It seems that if our generals and Congressional representatives understood or cared at all about what they are doing in Afghanistan, the ratio of military to civilian spending would be reversed and the spending for civilians would be increased until civilians were cared for, no matter what the cost.  What kind of a lying policy is  it when you claim to be protecting people and then you leave them to die from wounds, starvation, and sickness?

Our current debate doesn’t include the fact that the Afghans were credited with doing the fighting in the 1980’s that brought down the Soviet Union.  What kind of heartless government supplies the weapons and money for a fight like that and then walks away and leaves several million amputees and disabled people, including children, to fend for  themselves in a ruined country?  Our government has been bleeding Afghanistan for 30 years now and General McChrystal offers more bleeding.

There is one thing that should be the deciding question here and that is that, just as with the war in Iraq, George Bush started this war under false pretences.  The stated goal in the beginning was to find Osama bin Laden and destroy his ability to launch more attacks.  Bush demanded that the Taliban turn over bin Laden.  When they refused, Bush started bombing Afghanistan on Oct. 7, 2001.  On the weekend of Oct. 13-14, the Taliban offered to turn over bin Laden to a neutral third country for trial.  Bush said  “No.  There’s no negotiations.”  The corporate media, like the stinking jackals and corrupt parasites that they are, [Is this language too strong?  I'm a reasonable guy.  I can tone it down if I must] helped to make Bush look like a strong leader who refuses to negotiate with terrorists.  They helped to cover up the reality that Bush had just turned down an offer that could have ended the war almost at it’s start.  He didn’t want to end the war, he wanted to keep it going.

Filed under: Article 9 on November 29th, 2009