All In: The Education of General David Petraeus

Petraeus urged to quit over Afghan drawdown

What I found most interesting in this advance copy book review is the following:

She describes how Petraeus' first act was to lift McChrystal's restrictions on the use of force - especially on airstrikes - if civilians were nearby. "There is no question about our commitment to reducing civilian loss of life," Petraeus told his staff. There was, however, "a clear moral imperative to make sure we are fully supporting our troops in combat." Broadwell adds that the problem, according to Petraeus, was less McChrystal's order than how it was even more strictly re-interpreted by lower commanders.

The Runaway General

I love GEN McChrystal more than ever now. What did the administration think they were going to get with an SF Officer in charge? Someone that isn't sarcastic and speaks his mind? The President and Vice-President need to calm down. On another note, the more I keep reading about Eikenberry lately, the less I like him. He seems to be creating way too much tension everywhere he goes. Calm down Karl, not being made a four-star general before your military retirement isn't the end of the world. I know you are a little jealous of that fourth star on McChrystal's uniform...

The Eik strikes back...

Despite his current loyalty to the new administration policy, LTG(R) Eikenberry's memos on Afghanistan seem to me, an outsider, like they are spot on. Here is the best excerpt from the article linked to above:

On Nov. 6, Mr. Eikenberry wrote: “President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner. The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal — a secure, peaceful, minimally self-sufficient Afghanistan hardened against transnational terrorist groups.

“Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further,” Mr. Eikenberry wrote. “They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”

He continued, “Beyond Karzai himself, there is no political ruling class that provides an overarching national identity that transcends local affiliations and provides reliable partnership.”

In a second cable, dated Nov. 9, he expressed new concerns: “In a PBS interview on November 7, Karzai sounded bizarrely cautionary notes about his willingness to address governance and corruption. This tracks with his record of inaction or grudging compliance in this area.”

Previous posts on Karl Eikenberry:

McChrystal Hearing

Eikenberry to Washington: Show me the money!

Our Afghanistan Ambassador

Also, take a look at this old post, from September 2008, on Pakistan's Army Chief GEN Kayani:

New Pakistani Army Chief

Jim Jones now President Obama's insurance with military

Obama, McChrystal meet in Denmark

Hopefully, GEN McChrystal told the president that every day he spends making the "perfect" decision, more American servicemembers die. President Obama's decision amounts to are we all in or all out. In my mind it is that simple.

More scalps...

Another decent piece by Ralph Peters. I don't usually agree with him, but often times he makes some good (but often over the top) points. Here is an excerpt:

Yet, in Afghanistan, we've put the bulk of our efforts into turning a vast flophouse into the Four Seasons -- instead of focusing ruthlessly on our terrorist enemies. It's politically correct madness.

What we really need is just a compact, lethal force of special operators, intelligence resources and air assets, along with sufficient conventional forces for protection and punitive raids. More troops just mean more blood and frustration...

Our hunter-killer task forces should be deployed on a limited number of strategically positioned bases supported by air. Don't worry about the Afghan government -- Afghans don't.

The other alternative -- sending still more troops to die for Washington's fantasy of a Disney-World Afghanistan -- is disgraceful. Stop building sewage systems. Take scalps...

In Afghanistan, we're asking Hutus to fight for Tutsis and Hatfields to guard McCoys...

The Soviets and their Afghan cronies lost because their enemies were willing to sacrifice more -- to give their lives for their heritage, however backward and cruel.

Afghans are willing to fight. They're just not willing to fight for us.

Obama Facing Rising Anxiety on Afghanistan

Good job, Mr. Attackerman.


See also:
McChrystal Considers Abandoning Remote U.S. Troop Outposts

Again, as stated countless times on here, Pakistan's military doesn't really care about fighting the Taliban, especially when they view us as temporary allies. They want to fight the 300,000 Indian troops garrisoned in Kashmir.

McChrystal's Advisors

The Drone War

The drone war against Al Qaeda's leaders--and, increasingly, their Pakistani-based Taliban allies--has been waged with little public discussion or congressional investigation of its legality or efficacy, even though the offensive is essentially a program of assassination that kills not only militant leaders, but also civilians in a country that is, at least nominally, a close ally of the United States. Nor has there been a substantive debate about whether the gains of winnowing the ranks of Al Qaeda's leadership outweigh the fact that the inevitable civilian casualties are a superb recruiting tool for the Pakistani Taliban. Indeed, the drone strikes have pushed militants deeper into Pakistan and given them an excuse to strike the heartland of the country, further destabilizing the already rickety government in Islamabad. All of which raises the question of whether the drone campaign, however useful in the short term, might fatally undermine U.S. efforts to stabilize the region and to win the long-term war against Al Qaeda and its allies.

In the face of the intense Pakistani opposition to American boots on the ground, the Bush administration chose to rely on drones to target suspected militants. Bush ordered the CIA to expand its attacks with Predator and Reaper drones, and, according to a former Bush administration official familiar with the program, the U.S. government stopped notifying Pakistani officials when strikes were imminent or obtaining their "concurrence" for the attacks. As a result, the time that it took for a target to be identified and engaged dropped from many hours to 45 minutes.

Forty-five minutes in combat is the equivalent of the Cretaceous Period of the Mesozoic Era - insurgents move and things change just like dinosaurs thrived in the beginning of the Era and were extinct by the era's final period. The time it takes to launch a drone attack is ridiculous. What could solve this time problem is artillery and delegating the authority to kinetic strikes to the battalion level. Division commanders, the senior raters of battalion commanders, should commend battalion commanders who effectively use drones and artillery to kill the bad guys as a part of their counterinsurgency campaign. That will be the only way to implement more frequent tactical use - otherwise everyone will continue to have to get so many approvals that by the time a strike is approved it is already based on old intelligence. Hopefully, LTG McChrystal will do something like this - afterall OCFI always had priority for drone strikes and somehow the JSOC did a good job in killing bad guys and the counterinsurgency campaign did not crumble.

The use of Guided Unitary Rockets, aka GMLRS, was very effective in Al Anbar in 2006, you know when the war was apparently "lost," but infantry and armor officers, who are usually the commanders of brigades, divisions, and corps, do not understand how to properly use artillery to quickly act on actionable intelligence. They are afraid of collateral damage and a career-ending artillery strike - despite artillery being more accurate than the mortars they frequently authorize the use of (because they probably had a second platoon command as a mortar PL) and even, dare I say it, drone strikes. They shouldn't be scared, afterall, plenty of mistakes have been made by the general officer corps of the Army and most survived and were promoted!

See: Airborne Intelligence Is Growing Component in Fight Against Insurgents

McChrystal Hearing

One change would potentially abandon the current division of labor, in which the forces of individual NATO members are responsible for certain parts of Afghanistan. Instead, the effort would be divided according to function, with NATO performing most of the training of Afghan forces...

Another goal, McChrystal said, would be to promote greater continuity in U.S. personnel by developing a corps of experts in Afghanistan's language and culture who would be assigned to the country for repeated tours.

To improve the complicated command structure in Afghanistan, McChrystal said, he would seek NATO approval to put his deputy, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, in charge of military operations in the five military regions of Afghanistan, allowing McChrystal to focus on higher-level strategy.

While I have never served in Afghanistan, these ideas seem like a good start to attempt to turn around what seems like a dire situation in Afghanistan. This strategy will be hard to implement, but I believe LTG McChrystal is being quite coy in describing how he will put his plan to work. The way I am reading how the McChrystal Strategy will be implemented is first, LTG McChrystal will assign units to a specific task, not to a specific land area or piece of the pie. This means that the U.S. mission will probably change from patrolling and training ANA in RC-East to being responsible for all high-profile direct action strikes (something McChrystal was in charge of in JSOC in Iraq) on Taliban strongholds across the entire nation. Meanwhile, the other countries' mission will be to train the ANA across all of Afghanistan. Next, due to this new division of labor and responsibility, LTG McChrystal will attempt to convince NATO that he needs LTG Rodriguez to be the tactical commander. He will explain that under the new division of labor, the U.S. will take all direct action tactical missions while the rest of NATO only trains the ANA. He will conclude with, therefore, you won't even have to answer to LTG Rodriguez since he will, for all intensive purposes, be the tactical commander of only U.S. troops. I am guessing that LTG McChrystal's U.K. deputy, Lieutenant-General J.B. Dutton, a fellow commando, will then be the "tactical" commander for training the ANA and all nations doing the training mission will report to him. This new division of labor will allow LTG McChrystal to focus on strategic level problems with Afghanistan Ambassador retired LTG Eikenberry and CENTCOM Commander GEN Petraeus. This is my educated guess on how implementation will occur... we will soon see if I have it correct.

Flag Officer Official Biographies

I'm getting some good feedback on posting the official Army biographies of general officers on here, so here are LTG McChrystal's and LTG Rodriguez' official Army biographies:LTG Stanley a., McChrystal

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Resumes & CVs ltg mcchrystal

LTG_David_M.,_Rodriguez

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Resumes & CVs ltg rodriguez

Oh yeah, and here is that other guy's biography, the outgoing ISAF/OEF commander's biography:GEN David D., McKiernan

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Resumes & CVs gen mckiernan

It's Obama's War Now

I'm happy that bold action was taken and a general that wasn't producing was relieved. Hopefully, McChrystal and Rodriguez will succeed...but will doing what is necessary to win at the flag officer level (or at any level) be enough when there have never been enough troops in Afghanistan to "succeed."

McChrystal and Rodriguez are close friends. They have both been in Washington for more than a year. And Geoff Morrell, Gates' press secretary, said in a phone interview this afternoon that they're both "champing at the bit" to get back on the front lines. "They're rested and raring to go," he said. "They understand the strategy. They're determined to win. They will do what is necessary to win."

A General Steps From the Shadows

If you read this overview of LTG McChrystal's career I think it becomes obvious he is an amazing choice to replace GEN McKiernan. Operations in Afghanistan are light infantry and special operations based and having an officer that commanded light infantry and special operations units during his career will go a long way. His prior work with the intelligence agencies will also go a long way. He seems like the perfect fit. Now if we could just get more (rested and experienced) troops...

Soon to be GEN McChrystal

Abu M beat me to the punch here. Here are his thoughts on LTG McChrystal: McKiernan Out, McChrystal In

As I have stated earlier, LTG McChrystal is more than qualified for combat command. I also stated that implementing a counterinsurgency strategy fell to GEN McKiernan, not GEN Petraeus, and questioned how he and the Obama administration could save Afghanistan. Thankfully, the Obama administration acted swiftly and replaced GEN McKiernan quickly. They fired a general that wasn't getting the job done - holy $h!7!!! Bravo, Obama administration! Bravo, Secretary Gates (pbuh)!