Pentagon replaces top Afghanistan commander
11 May 2009 21:14:59 GMT

Source: Reuters
* Gates asks for Afghanistan commander's resignation
* Pentagon chief says fresh military thinking was needed
* U.S. special operations expert set to replace McKiernan
(Adds experts comment)
By David Morgan

McKiernan, who became NATO commander in Afghanistan last June and added the top U.S. command last fall, is the chief architect of the current force build-up that is expected to more than double the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan to 68,000 by the end of the year. There were about 32,000 troops there at the end of December.

Many of the extra forces will be deployed in southern Afghanistan where officials say the Taliban has made inroads because of a lack of western forces.

McKiernan has pushed for an additional 10,000 troops in 2010, a proposal that appeared to run afoul of Gates who has expressed a reluctance to boost the force level beyond 68,000 troops.

Gates acknowledged that McKiernan's departure from Afghanistan likely would mark the end of his military career.

"General McKiernan was fired in a very public manner," said military analyst Andrew Exum of the Center for a New American Security, a Washington think tank.

"Policymakers for a while had been losing faith in General McKiernan's ability to really understand this conflict," he said, decribing a shift from McKiernan's terrain- and enemy-focused strategy to a population-centered battle plan.

The new Obama plan for Afghanistan calls for a military push to reverse deteriorating security, a surge of civilian aid and development assistance, and possible reconciliation between the Kabul government and some members of the Taliban.

The reshuffle represented a "shift in focus right now to a different command style at a very critical period in the war," said analyst Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank

329-326 BCE

Having conquered Persia, Alexander the Great invades Afghanistan, but fails to subdue its people. His occupation eventually fails, plagued by constant revolts.

More timeline

General Advocating For ‘Victory Declaration’ Over AQI Also Declared ‘Major Combat Over’ In 2003

Think Progress
By Faiz Shakir on Oct 15th, 2007

I keep thinking that I am missing something, they could have shuffled the deck and reassigned him without the public firing. Makes me wonder what isn't being said.

Why the Pentagon Axed Its Afghan Warlord

Not everyone welcomed the change, however. Some viewed McKiernan's firing as unfair, noting that he had inherited command of an under-resourced Afghan theater that had been a secondary priority to Iraq. "In Afghanistan, we do what we can," Mullen himself had said in December 2007. "In Iraq, we do what we must." And while McKiernan was given his Afghan command during the Bush Administration, it had been Gates who had appointed him - at Mullen's recommendation.

Gates took pains on Monday to avoid criticizing McKiernan. He told the four-star general that his Army career was effectively over during a face-to-face meeting in Afghanistan last week. "This was a kick in the teeth, but McKiernan took it extraordinarily well," a senior Pentagon official said. Other military officials were less courteous. "I still can't figure out why they put an armored guy with no Afghan experience in charge" one said. A second senior official said "Dave McKiernan is clearly part of the Army's old guard - he led troops in [1991's] Desert Storm, for pete's sake. But if things were going better over there, he'd be staying."

Gates has long demonstrated an impatience with war-time commanders who passively wait for the military hierarchy to give them what they need. He was stunned at the military's foot-dragging when he ordered additional armored vehicles and drone aircraft to the Afghan and Iraq wars.Even though McKiernan's dismissal had been in the works prior to Gates' trip to Afghanistan last week (Mullen had warned McKiernan two weeks ago that it was coming), Gates was incensed by some of what he witnessed during that visit. Several troops complained that they lacked basic gear after arriving in Afghanistan. "It is a considerable concern to me," he said last Thursday, brushing off a suggestion that the Taliban or the priority given to Iraq had been to blame for the Afghan shortfalls. "It's more, really, a logistical challenge than it is anything else," Gates said. That, one of the defense chief's top aides said, is an unacceptable failure in a theater of war. "McKiernan never quite figured out how to ensure that he would succeed - he was still too dependent on the organization coming to his rescue," he said. "Sadly, this institution doesn't always do that."

character assassination or a true worry? ~ Raw Story

NY Times

U.S.: McChrystal Choice Suggests Special Ops Strikes to Continue
Analysis by Gareth Porter*

WASHINGTON, May 12 (IPS) - The choice of Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal to become the new U.S. commander in Afghanistan has been hailed by Defence Secretary Robert Gates and national news media as ushering in a new unconventional approach to counterinsurgency.

But McChrystal’s background sends a very different message from the one claimed by Gates and the news media. His long specialisation in counter-terrorism operations suggests an officer who is likely to have more interest in targeted killings than in the kind of politically sensitive counterinsurgency programmes that the Obama administration has said it intends to carry out.

In announcing the extraordinary firing of Gen. David McKiernan and the nomination of McChrystal to replace him, Gates said that the mission in Afghanistan "requires new thinking and new approaches by our military leaders" and praised McChrystal for his "unique skill set in counterinsurgency".

Media reporting on the choice of McChrystal simply echoed the Pentagon’s line. The Washington Post said his selection "marks the continued ascendancy of officers who have pressed for the use of counterinsurgency tactics, in Iraq and Afghanistan, that are markedly different from the Army's traditional doctrine".

The New York Times cited unnamed "Defense Department officials" in reporting, "His success in using intelligence and firepower to track and kill insurgents, and his training in unconventional warfare that emphasizes the need to protect the population, made him the best choice for the command in Afghanistan..."

The Wall Street Journal suggested that McChrystal was the kind of commander who would "fight the kind of complex counterinsurgency warfare" that Gates wants to see in Afghanistan, because his command of Special Operations forces in Iraq had involved "units that specialize in guerilla warfare, including the training of indigenous armies".

But these explanations for the choice of McChrystal equate his command of the Special Operations forces with expertise on counterinsurgency, despite the fact that McChrystal spent his last five years as a commander of Special Operations forces focusing overwhelmingly on counter-terrorism operations, not on counterinsurgency.

Whereas counterinsurgency operations are aimed primarily at influencing the population and are primarily non-military, counter-terrorism operations are exclusively military and focus on targeting the "enemy".

As commander of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from April 2003 to August 2008, he was preoccupied with pursuing high value al Qaeda targets and local and national insurgent leaders in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan – mostly through targeted raids and airstrikes.

It was under McChrystal’s command, in fact, that JSOC shifted away from the very mission of training indigenous military units in counterinsurgency operations that had been a core mission of Special Operations Forces.

McChrystal spent an unusual five years as commander of JSOC, because he had become a close friend of then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld came to view JSOC as his counter to the covert operations capabilities of the CIA, which he hated and distrusted, and Rumsfeld used JSOC to capture or kill high value enemy leaders, including Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda’s top leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In 2005, JSOC’s parent command, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was directed by Rumsfeld to "plan, synchronize and, as directed, conduct global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with other combatant commanders". That directive has generally been regarded as granting SOCOM the authority to carry out actions unilaterally anywhere on the globe.

Under that directive, McChyrstal and JSOC carried out targeted raids and other operations against suspected Taliban in Afghanistan which were not coordinated with the commander of other U.S. forces in the country. Gen. David Barno, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has said that he put a stop to targeted airstrikes in early 2004, but they resumed after he was replaced by McKiernan in 2005.

U.S. airstrikes which have caused hundreds of civilian deaths have become a major political issue in Afghanistan and the subject of official protests by Afghan President Hamid Karzai as well as by the lower house of the Afghan parliament. Many of the airstrikes and commando raids that have caused large-scale civilian deaths have involved Special Operations forces operating separately from the NATO command.

Special Operations forces under McChrystal’s command also engaged in raiding homes in search of Taliban suspects, angering villagers in Herat province to the point where they took up arms against the U.S. forces, according to a May 2007 story by Carlotta Gall and David E. Sanger of the New York Times.

After a series of raids by Special Operations forces in Afghanistan in late 2008 and early 2009 killed women and children, to mounting popular outrage, McChrystal’s successor as commander of JSOC, Vice Adm. William H. McRaven, ordered a temporary reduction in the rate of such commando raids in mid-February for two weeks.

However, the JSOC raids resumed at their original intensity in March. Later that month Gen. David Petraeus issued a directive putting all JSOC operations under McKiernan’s tactical command, but there has been no evidence that the change has curbed the raids by Special Operations Forces.

President Barack Obama’s National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones responded to Karzai’s demand for an end to U.S. airstrikes by saying, "We're going to take a look at trying to make sure that we correct those things we can correct, but certainly to tie the hands of our commanders and say we're not going to conduct air strikes, it would be imprudent,"

The airstrike in western Farah province that killed nearly 150 civilians last week, provoking protests by hundreds of university students in Kabul, was also ordered by Special Operations Forces.

McChrystal’s nomination to become director of the Joint Staff at the Pentagon in May 2008 was held up for months while the Senate Armed Services Committee investigated a pattern of abuse of detainees by military personnel under his command. Sixty-four service personnel assigned or attached to Special Operations units were disciplined for detainee abuse between early 2004 and the end of 2007.

more

McChrystal spent an unusual five years as commander of JSOC, because he had become a close friend of then Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld came to view JSOC as his counter to the covert operations capabilities of the CIA, which he hated and distrusted, and Rumsfeld used JSOC to capture or kill high value enemy leaders, including Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda’s top leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

In 2005, JSOC’s parent command, the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), was directed by Rumsfeld to "plan, synchronize and, as directed, conduct global operations against terrorist networks in coordination with other combatant commanders". That directive has generally been regarded as granting SOCOM the authority to carry out actions unilaterally anywhere on the globe.

And the New York Times reports some of McChrystal's personal habits have also been making news - that he often eats just one meal each day (in the evening), "to avoid sluggishness":

He is known for operating on a few hours' sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible.

Haven't I seen this movie before? The last time I think it starred Clint Eastwood. Schwarzenegger, maybe? Bruce? I dunno.