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.
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.
McChrystal concludes the document’s five-page Commander’s Summary on a note of muted optimism: “While the situation is serious, success is still achievable.”
But 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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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Since when did the objective become to win the war in Afghanistan by defeating the insurgency? That is not what we were originally sold on.
According to Stephen Harper, “We are not going to ever defeat the insurgency. My reading of Afghan history is that it’s probably had an insurgency forever, of some kind,” and “What has to happen in Afghanistan is we have to have an Afghan government that is capable of managing that insurgency and improving its own governance.”
With the insurgency still based in Pakistan, the only achievable objective in Afghanistan remains to have a corruption-free Afghan government, with its own police and security forces capable of protecting Afghan citizens. Unfortunately we seem to be getting into mission creep territory now, where our troops are expected to achieve the impossible, so as to cover for the failings of Afghanistan’s corrupt government. Our troops are not capable of policing Afghanistan, since they don’t speak the language, know the culture, or even have the authority to arrest anyone who isn’t trying to kill them, so if NATO and especially the UN can’t get their act together and sort out Afghanistan’s government and backward culture, then we should pull our troops out.
Agreed but I say that for a different reason.
It appears the world flatly refuses to deal with the mad mullahs of Iran. It’s not Pakistan that is causing the problem — it’s Iran ( the country that is training and fielding this irregular army). They also supply it with the munitions which are killing our troops.
My view is that the leaders of Iran should be charged in the criminal court in the Hague and arrested as soon as they enter a jurisdiction where they can be extradited.
And I know — that will never happen.
I guess NATO couldn’t just bomb Afghanistan back into the Stone Age, they never left.
Perhaps, the war in Afghanistan wouldnt be going so poorly, if the U.S. hadnt abandon it in the beginning for their war in Iraq.
During conventional wars you could and would target the enemy armaments industry.
To do that with this enemy we would have to bomb madrassas filled with children. We would have to target civilians, (their women who bear a multitude of future terrorists).
Our civilized and ethical nature does not allow us to do that. We would rather die.
How many coalition soldiers have died hesitating, rather than putting an Afghan child or woman in danger?
mid island mike
How many
I think you’ll find that ‘road side bombs’ take more soldiers lives than anything else.
This war may not be winnable. No one else has had any success going right back in Afghanistan’s history with the British, Russians, Americans and now NATO troops.
It was never supposed to be a winnable war UV, let alone ours to fight. Our troops were only ever supposed to be in Afghanistan long enough to buy time for its fledgling government to raise an army capable of defending its civilian population against any radical Muslim insurgencies. By the time 2011 rolls around, our troops will have been there for a decade, and if Afghans aren’t ready or willing to fight for their own freedoms by then, it will be a strong indication that either they aren’t ready for democracy, or we are being taken for a ride by both the UN and Afghanistan’s corrupt government. Further, if corruption in Afghanistan turns out to be too great an obstacle for the UN to overcome, then we do not want to chance providing a corrupt government with an army that could later be used against its own people, so it would be preferable to let the place sort itself out, or not.
btdt, bombing Afghanistan into the stone age could have been achieved with a firecracker. It isn’t much of a change…
The “war” was won. The peace, however, has proved elusive. Jack hit the problem square: the mad mullahs continue to pull the strings. Until they’re dealt with, the peace will remain elusive.
Brian S,- Harper was right, and i dont see where he has changed his mind about that.
The story is about American issues, not Canadian ones.
I know Harper was right, but we have to be mindful of the seemingly new direction the mission has taken under the Obama administration because it will take pressure off of the UN and Afghanistan’s government just when they need to start getting their sorry acts together. I have little confidence at this point that the UN is capable of delivering on its vital role of shaping a stable, corruption free, democratic government in Afghanistan, that can provide reliable services, such as fair courts and a police force familiar with the territory etc., and without those in place, everything else can come into jeopardy. NATO is the best the world has ever seen at what it does, but it is a blunt instrument with a limited range of uses, and it cannot stand in the place of specialized government services forever before Afghanistan’s population starts to turn against it. It won’t matter much that NATO troops stay long enough or grow in number enough to defeat the current insurgency, if more insurgencies arise as a result.