So, Gen. Stanley McCrystal is out over the comments he made about Obama's Advisory team to, of all things, Rolling Stone magazine. His replacement is Gen. David Petraeus, the man who led the successful (against my predictions I'll admit) surge in Iraq to keep the lid on the place long enough for the US to get out.
Fired or resigned, he should be gone, because to talk that way to the press about your boss is both insubordinate and phenomenally bad judgement. That said, I don't know that this will make much difference on the ground. If Petraeus has extracted changes in the RoE as his price for filling the gap we might see some results. Stop playing all nice with the Taliban and smash them in conjunction with the Pakistanis and you'll still be able to leave in a year or so. The place will still be screwed, but you might manage to hand all of the newly confirmed mineral wealth over to the Chinese with the insurgency under some sort of control.
Cynical? That can't possibly be a shocker around here, but just as the Americans have been shut out of oil development in Iraq since the effective end of hostilities there, they will be the last ones to capitalize on the lithium, copper, etc. that are apparently there in abundance.
Since a time limit has been placed on the NATO deployment, if we want to make a difference in the place it's now a race to kill as many bomb makers, financiers, drug kingpins and garden variety terrorists as we can before we go. This doesn't mean carpet bomb the villages (although if the civvies have all fled...) but it means a hell of a lot more stick and not a lot else, because we won't be around to give out the carrots.
Pakistan wants more money and gear to continue the drive against the Taliban on their side of the Durand Line, and in this case I agree with them. The interests of the West, India, (Northern Alliance) Afghanistan and Pakistan all align with beating the Taliban et al back, so it's the smartest place to put your resources. The "perfect storm" for the Taliban would be if the Americans take the gloves off inside Afghanistan at the same time the Pakistani Army gears back up.
This isn't a magical solution to the problem, it just would allow a chance that at least part of Afghanistan could be salvaged. Perhaps not for the people who poured all of the blood and treasure into it, but that apparently (generic leftish protesters notwithstanding) is how the West does business these days. I don't approve of exploiting people, (China is doing a fine job of that in Africa these days) but a bit of quid pro quo seems reasonable.
It's an Augean stable of a country for sure, but let's see what the new brooms can do.
As an end note, I will mention another American soldier who ran afoul of his chain of command in an unpopular war, the late Col. David Hackworth. "Hack" however complained about the conduct of the Vietnam war, instead of adolescent trashing of personalities in the administration so the situations can't be directly compared. If McCrystal had complained about the conduct of the war he might at least have accomplished something on his way out, but no such luck.
No comments:
Post a Comment