Afghanistan/McChrystal Analysis: Hyperventilating Over the Tip, Missing the (Petraeus) Iceberg

Little to report overnight in the saga of General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, and his interview --- replete with jibes and insults at the Obama Administration by McChrystal and his aides --- with Rolling Stone magazine.

NEW Afghanistan Revealed: US Hands Over Millions of $$$…To “Warlords” (DeYoung)
Afghanistan Special: McChrystal and the Trashing of the President (US Military v. Obama, Chapter 472)
Afghanistan Document: The McChrystal Profile (Hastings — Rolling Stone)

In advance of his meeting with McChrystal today, President Obama said, ""I think it's clear that the article in which he and his team appeared showed a poor - showed poor judgment. But I also want to make sure that I talk to him directly before I make any final decisions." Obama then re-stated his key talking point, beyond any Rolling Stone obstacle:

I want everybody to keep in mind what our central focus is - and that is success in making sure that al-Qaida and its affiliates cannot attack the United States and its allies. And we've got young men and women there who are making enormous sacrifices, families back home who are making enormous sacrifices,

And so whatever decision that I make with respect to Gen. McChrystal - or any other aspect of Afghan policy - is determined entirely on how I can make sure that we have a strategy that justifies the enormous courage and sacrifice that those men and women are making over there and that ultimately makes this country safer.

Obama's statement capped an extraordinary day for Washington watchers. From before dawn, when some media outlets posted soundbites from the Rolling Stone profile, to bedtime, all other news fell before the chatter about McChrystal. (The biggest winner from yesterday's furour? It could be British Petroleum, who suddenly found that they were not the lead story in the US.)

It was a classic frenzy in which token moves began banner headlines. McChrystal had called Administration officials to apologise. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said he was concerned. The editor of Rolling Stone and the author of the piece, Michael Hastings, became media superstars for a day. Joe Klein of Time, using the time-worn device of an "unnamed source", seized centre stage by saying he most definitely knew McChrystal would resign.

That in turn left us with the white noise of "Will he/won't he? Should he/shouldn't he?" Hours of airtime and pages of print could be filled by simply re-wording the regretful conclusion: he's not the military Messiah, he's just a naughty boy.

When "perspective" was sought, it often verged on the historically ridiculous. Some journalists sought an analogy with President Truman's recall of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951, which might have been appropriate if McChrystal had threatened World War III by bombing China, bringing US forces to the verge of defeat, and calling for use of nuclear weapons.

OK, so what's the big deal? The media gets its drama. The Obama Administration buys time with statements to figure out how it is going to finesse the treatment of McChrystal, since 1) his firing/resignation or 2) his retention will bring another news cycle of criticism. And, apart from one press aide to the General, no one pays an immediate price.

Well, to be blunt: the story is not McChrystal and his boys laughing at Vice President Biden, declaring that the President is a fumbling ingenue, or sneering at their supporters like "old man" John McCain. Perhaps the most wayward statement from an "analyst" was the lament, "You think he's being fired for a pattern....He's being fired for an ARTICLE."

Wrong. Shrewder observers, drowned out in yesterday's clamour, know that the sticks-and-stones behind McChrystal's name-calling is the ongoing military battle to maintain policy supremacy over the civilians from the State Department to the US Embassy in Afghanistan to President Obama.

Twice Obama tried to set limits on a military-first approach to defeating the Taliban/extremists/Al Qa'eda/insurgents in Afghanistan. The day he entered office, having declared that he would seek a resolution to a US intervention which seemed to be going nowhere, the military presented him with three options, all of which called for an increase in US forces. Obama tried to curb the rush to escalation but gave way in March 2009 with a "limited" increase of 30,000 troops and support units.

Then the President, through National Security Advisor Jim Jones (the "clown stuck in 1985", according to a McChrystal aide), tried to draw the line: ask for any more soldiers and I will stare you out with "WTF?"

The outcome? The commanders called Obama's bluff: they said the intervention would be lost without another escalation, and they got the President's acceptance in December.

There was one headline caveat, however: Obama indicated --- to what degree of firmness depends on who is interpreting --- that the US forces would come out by July 2011.

McChrystal does not like that deadline. Nor does his boss.

That boss --- the head of US Central Command, General David Petraeus  --- was the dog who did not bark yesterday. Less than a week after testifying to Congressmen, leaving the clear impression that US forces would have to remain beyond July next year, Petraeus issued no statement, saw no reporters, provided no leaks.

If there is an important media angle here, it is this difference between McChrystal and Petraeus: the latter is far too clever in the ways of Washington to let a Rolling Stone reporter tail after him, putting verbal indiscretions on the record.

It is that difference in tactics --- not tactics against the Taliban, but tactics in the talking shops of Washington --- that means McChrystal is the point man in this US campaign, and he is expendable. After all, he got his current position after another American commander, General David McKiernan, was thrown under the bus last year.

Petraeus is in a different position. Having risen through the command ranks in Iraq, seizing the glory because of the mythical "surge", he is now at the apex of field authority. Afghanistan is his to win or lose.

His to win or lose, beyond and possibly despite the President. For --- take a look through EA's archives --- the spinning from January 2009 against Obama's limits has come from Petraeus and his allies, either at distance from Central Asia or in the corridors of Washington.

When the tip of this "crisis" is gone, that iceberg will remain.

Afghanistan Revealed: US Hands Over Millions of $$$...To "Warlords" (DeYoung)

Want a break from the whipped-up drama over General Stanley McChrystal and his "mistake" of an interview? Possibly to read something more significant?

Karen DeYoung writes for The Washington Post:

The U.S. military is funding a massive protection racket in Afghanistan, indirectly paying tens of millions of dollars to warlords, corrupt public officials and the Taliban to ensure safe passage of its supply convoys throughout the country, according to congressional investigators.

The security arrangements, part of a $2.16 billion transport contract, violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as Defense Department regulations, and "dramatically undermine" larger U.S. objectives of curtailing corruption and strengthening effective governance in Afghanistan, a report released late Monday said.

The report describes a Defense Department that is well aware that some of the money paid to contractors winds up in the hands of warlords and insurgents. Military logisticians on the ground are focused on getting supplies where they are needed and have "virtually no understanding of how security is actually provided" for the local truck convoys that transport more than 70 percent of all goods and materials used by U.S. troops. Alarms raised by prime trucking contractors were met by the military "with indifference and inaction," the report said.

"The findings of this report range from sobering to shocking," Rep. John Tierney (D-Mass.) wrote in an introduction to the 79-page report, titled "Warlord, Inc., Extortion and Corruption Along the U.S. Supply Chain in Afghanistan."

The report comes as the number of U.S. casualties is rising in the Afghan war, and public and congressional support is declining. The administration has been on the defensive in recent weeks, insisting that the slow progress of anti-Taliban offensives in Helmand province and the city of Kandahar does not mean that more time is needed to assess whether President Obama's strategy is working.

"I think it's much too early to draw a negative conclusion," said a senior administration official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. "I think there's more positive than negative. We're heading toward a year-end assessment, which will be a big one for us." The review was set when Obama announced in December that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan and begin to withdraw them in July 2011.

Tierney is chairman of the national security subcommittee of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, whose majority staff spent six months preparing the report. A proponent of a smaller U.S. military footprint in Afghanistan and targeted attacks on insurgents, Tierney said in an interview Monday that he hopes the report will help members of Congress "analyze whether they think this is the most effective way to go about dealing with terrorism. Or the most cost-effective way."

The report's conclusions will be introduced at a hearing Tuesday at which senior military and defense officials are scheduled to testify. The report says that all evidence and findings were made available to Republicans on the subcommittee. A spokesman for Rep. Jeff Flake (Ariz.), the ranking Republican, said the lawmaker will not comment until he has seen the entire report.

In testimony shortly after Obama's strategy announcement, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that "much of the corruption" in Afghanistan has been fueled by billions of dollars' worth of foreign money spent there, "and one of the major sources of funding for the Taliban is the protection money."

Military officials said that they have begun several corruption investigations in Afghanistan and that a task force has been named, headed by Navy Rear Adm. Kathleen Dussault, director of logistics and supply operations for the chief of naval operations and former head of the Baghdad-based joint contracting command for Iraq and Afghanistan.

Rear Adm. Gregory J. Smith, communications chief for U.S. and NATO forces in Kabul, said that the entire Tierney report has not been examined but that Dussault will be "reviewing every aspect of our contracting process and recommending changes to avoid our contribution to what is arguably a major source of revenue that feeds the cycle of corruption."

The U.S. military imports virtually everything it uses in Afghanistan -- including food, water, fuel and ammunition -- by road through Pakistan or Central Asia to distribution hubs at Bagram air base north of Kabul and a similar base outside Kandahar. From there, containers are loaded onto trucks provided by Afghan contractors under the $2.16 billion Host Nation Trucking contract. Unlike in the Iraq war, the security and vast majority of the trucks are provided by Afghans, a difference that Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has praised as promoting local entrepreneurship.

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UPDATE Afghanistan Special: McChrystal and the Trashing of the President (US Military v. Obama, Chapter 472)

UPDATE 1945 GMT: So who is defending General McChrystal? Well, let's go to Kabul for a statement from a spokesman: "[Hamid Karzai] strongly supports McChrystal and his strategy in Afghanistan and believes he is the best commander the United States has sent to Afghanistan over the last nine years."

UPDATE 1830 GMT: Thumbs Down from the White House? Or Just a Bit of Posturing?

The stingers from the statement of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, "All options are on the table [including McChrystal's resignation]....The magnitude and graveness of the mistake here are profound.”

Afghanistan Document: The McChrystal Profile (Hastings — Rolling Stone)

Gibbs said he gave an advance copy of the article, which had already gone out to the press, to Obama last night. The President was "irked".

Gibbs said the president wants to know “what in the world he was thinking.”

And here's Secretary of Defense Gates' careful statement:

I read with concern the profile piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the upcoming edition of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine. I believe that Gen. McChrystal made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment in this case. We are fighting a war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies, who directly threaten the United States, Afghanistan, and our friends and allies around the world. Going forward, we must pursue this mission with a unity of purpose. Our troops and coalition partners are making extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our security, and our singular focus must be on supporting them and succeeding in Afghanistan without such distractions. Gen. McChrystal has apologized to me and is similarly reaching out to others named in this article to apologize to them as well. I have recalled Gen. McChrystal to Washington to discuss this in person.

UPDATE 1740 GMT: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has issued a far-from-robust defence of General McChrystal. He expressed "concern" over the "significant" mistake of the Rolling Stone interview.

McChrystal also may have lost the backing of key Senators like former Presidential candidate John McCain former Vice Presidential candidate Joseph , ieberman, and Lindsay Graham, who called the General's remarks "inappropriate, inconsistent with relationship between the Commander-in-Chief and the military".

UPDATE 1450 GMT: The executive editor of Rolling Stone says that General McChrystal was shown the advance copy of the profile and raised no objections.

UPDATE 1230 GMT: Department of Defense officials say General McChrystal has fired a press aide over the Rolling Stone episode.

The US Embassy in Afghanistan, despite the military's ridicule of Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, has maintained that Eikenberry and General McChrystal "are both fully committed" to President Obama's Afghan strategy and are working together to "implement" the plan.

UPDATE 1200 GMT: Five minutes after posting this, with the projection of a "quick cover-up" of the episode: "Top administration official says McChrystal has personally called Vice President Biden, [Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff] Mullen, [Secretary of Defense] Gates, and NSC advisor Jones to apologize."

In the first week of Barack Obama's Presidency, we noted that his senior military commanders were trying to alter his policies in key areas, to the point of undermining him. We noted their opposition to his plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility and his timetable for withdrawal from Iraq and their determination to escalate the military intervention in Afghanistan.

That challenge has continued for almost 18 months with Obama --- in my view --- getting "rolled over" on the Afghanistan issue as he twice conceded to the demands for troop escalation.

That is the background to today's hot media story. Rolling Stone magazine has released advance copies of an interview with General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan. The soundbites are so explosive that McChrystal has already issued his "sincerest apology" for "a mistake reflecting poor judgement". He is flying back to Washington, reportedly for a meeting with the President.

All very dramatic. It's far from surprising, however: if this is to be more than a shiny bauble for the media, McChrystal's interview --- when it is released in full on Friday --- will need to be considered as far from "a mistake". It is part of the ongoing military contest with Obama.

Consider the soundbites from the advance copies of the interview.

1. Taking on the President. McChrystal and an aide refer to a 2009 meeting with Obama. The aide belittles the President for "a 10-minute photo op": "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was... he didn't seem very engaged. The boss was pretty disappointed."

Gen McChrystal says, "I found that time painful. I was selling an unsellable position."

Hmm... McChrystal's pain smacks of a self-serving "poor me" pose. His supposed weariness over the "unsellable" is a bit ironic, given that McChrystal's visit was quite likely the ultimate in sales jobs: he was pitching for the increase in troop deployments that Obama granted in December.

2. Dismissing the Vice-President. Joe Biden may have tried to assert his authority with personal visits to Afghanistan but this snapshot from Rolling Stone portrays a military smacking his annoyance aside.

"Are you asking about Vice-President Biden?" McChrystal asks. 'Who's that?"

An aide then says: "Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?"

3. Trampling on the Ambassador. One of the high-profile episodes in that battle occurred last autumn, when a memorandum from the US Ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry (a retired General), was leaked. It questioned the drive for military escalation, given fundamental political problems and corruption in Afghanistan.

McChrystal's considered reaction? "I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before. Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so'."

4. Dismissing the Advisors. Last August, in an effort to check the military's drive for more troops, National Security Advisor James Jones --- another former General --- went to Kabul and warned commanders that, if they pushed for escalation so soon after March's build-up of forces, Obama would ask, "WTF [What the F***]?"

The view of Jones from McChrystal's aide? "A clown stuck in 1985".

And here's the respect that Obama's special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, gets. Told of an incoming message, McChrystal says: "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke....I don't even want to open it."

Only Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it appears, gets approval from McChrystal's staff.

Now, a lot of this might be put down to day-to-day tensions in the difficult environment of Afghanistan. But --- and this is the point that seems to be eluding the media so far --- these examples of anger, impertinence, disrespect, and near-subversion of the President's authority did not occur in the heat of the moment.

They were offered, after the event, to a reporter as the "real" impressions of senior members of the US military.

That's not frustration. That's a deliberate challenge, in an ongoing campaign to challenge, to the President.

As McChrystal flies to Washington, possibly for a quick cover-up of the episode by all concerned, it needs to be remembered as such. For deliberate challenges do not suddenly evaporate.

UPDATED Afghanistan Document: The McChrystal Profile (Hastings --- Rolling Stone)

Michael Hastings writes for Rolling Stone:

"How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies –-- to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops.

Afghanistan Special: McChrystal’s Interview and the Trashing of the President (US Military v. Obama, Chapter 472)

McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

“The dinner comes with the position, sir,” says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.

McChrystal turns sharply in his chair. “Hey, Charlie,” he asks, “does this come with the position?”

McChrystal gives him the middle finger.

The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center.

The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel’s thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications.

Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual –-- blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks –-- McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the “most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine.” The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too “Gucci”. He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon’s most secretive
black ops.

“What’s the update on the Kandahar bombing?” McChrystal asks Flynn. The city has been rocked by two massive car bombs in the past day alone, calling into question the general’s assurances that he can wrest it from the Taliban.

“We have two KIAs, but that hasn’t been confirmed,” Flynn says.

McChrystal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate-blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you’ve fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice.

“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says.

He pauses a beat.

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it.”

With that, he’s out the door.

“Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides.

“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”

The next morning, McChrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, a French military academy. The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan.” The remarks earned him a smackdown from the President himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile.

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says.

Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the Vice President with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”....

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