Knee deep in controversy

Another loss in a senseless war. The out of control general has been fired; the longest war in U.S. history continues.

President Barack Obama's June 23 removal of General Stanley McChrystal as commander of U.S. and ISAF forces in Afghanistan was necessary because the U.S. Constitution guarantees the principle of civilian control of the military, with the President serving as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and McChrystal's comments to a reporter disdaining his superiors in the chain of command were unacceptable.

But this is a sideshow: More important than who runs the war is whether it is a war worth fighting.

In an article in Rolling Stone magazine, McChrystal ridiculed nearly every member of the president's national security team, including the president. Such insubordination endangers the lives of the troops because discipline is essential to military operations; thus, the Uniform Code of Military Justice prohibits officers from using "contemptuous words" toward high-level government officials. Also, the general's arrogant disrespect degrades the constitutional rule of law that is the bedrock of liberty and security.

McChrystal, the top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, has a right, and an obligation, to speak his mind. Indeed, many former generals spoke out against Obama's predecessor's military strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan - but they voiced their dissent publicly only after resigning their posts in protest that their voices went unheeded by the 43rd commander in chief and his war Cabinet. The Rolling Stone article reveals how frustration is erupting on multiple fronts given the futility of the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan.

Ironic is that the general's on-the-record comments to reporter Michael Hastings are substantively insignificant - he doesn't question the policy; after all, it's mainly his policy, and Obama has basically given him everything he's asked for to fight this war. But publicly disparaging his superiors reflects not only poor judgement but also a dangerous dereliction of duty. Dissent can be honorable, but there's nothing honorable in McChrystal's macho venom. Perhaps it's just wisecracking, but in the age of new media, where soldiers blog and everything echoes, loose lips can have dire consequences.

Many in the military share the disdainful attitude reflected in the general's comments, which is all the more reason for him to have shown respect and restraint. Troops will see the general's comments as license for them to be insolent. His words reinforce the efforts of the Tea Party and others to demean and undermine the authority of the president. Many share suspicion of the 44th commander-in-chief - with a strange name, a different skin color, who has never served in the military and who opposed the war in Iraq. Yet in the name of national security and fighting terrorism, Obama has done much to continue the path of his predecessor.

Afghanistan has become Obama's war in large part thanks to the general. McChrystal publicly lobbied for additional troops - warning of "mission failure" if he didn't get an extra 40,000 troops - and succeeded in pushing the new president, not wanting to appear weak, into widening that war with its largest increase of forces. As the counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy pursued by McChrystal has failed to reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan, it is increasingly being questioned by troops on the ground, military officers, lawmakers and common citizens.

Numerous experts on the region believe the U.S. war effort remains a losing battle. Andrew Bacevich, acclaimed author, scholar and retired colonel, is one outspoken critic of the war.

Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and West Point classmate of McChrystal's, says, "The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetrated on the American people. The idea that we are going to spend a billion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense."

Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires, and there is scant reason to believe the United States can succeed where the British, Soviet and other empires failed. As noted recently by Cesar Chelala of the Middle East Times International, "It is impossible to win a war that you cannot define. That seems to be the main lesson drawn from Afghanistan, where a so-called victory seems ever more unreachable." Al-Qaeda now operates in Pakistan, not Afghanistan, and there is rising anti-war sentiment in the United States and abroad.

In "The Runaway General" (in the July 8-22 print  issue of Rolling Stone), Michael Hastings describes the unenviable situation McChrystal confronted two months ago when trying to sell his new war strategy to NATO allies: trying "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 the German President and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops."

Afghan President Hamid Karzai - he of massive election fraud and other corrupt practices - is increasingly detested at home and abroad and yet remains the face of U.S. policy. U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, a retired lieutenant general who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005, questions COIN and the entire mission in Afghanistan, forecasting, "We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos."

James Jones, the U.S. national security adviser and a retired four-star general, when asked in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegl whether he agreed with McChrystal's request for a troop increase, answered: "Generals always ask for more troops. ? You can keep on putting troops in, and you could have 200,000 troops there and Afghanistan will swallow them up as it has done in the past."

McChrystal may well have used his on-the-record comments as his own exit strategy from an unwinnable war, knowing full well it would lead to his dismissal. Hastings' article, however, is most important for what was not reported about it: It shows the U.S. military campaign failing and the much-praised general losing control of the war and his troops.

Nine years on, the war is going badly. June became the deadliest month of the war for coalition troops when four British soldiers were killed June 24; civilian casualties are on the rise, and there's no end in sight. Obama is already backtracking from his July 2011 deadline for withdrawing U.S. troops. Hastings concludes, "So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war." Why fight the Taliban in Afghanistan while supporting them via aid to Pakistan's intelligence service?

More than a million lives have been lost and more than a trillion dollars spent by the United States since October 2001 fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is in disarray as is Afghanistan. Like all others who tried to tame Afghanistran, the United States will be seen by Afghans as foreign occupiers and will fail to shape Afghanistan as it wishes. Obama, Hastings writes, "finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire; a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it's the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn't want."

Now that the McChrystal sideshow is done, and General David Petreaus has been recycled into the post, attention should focus on withdrawing all U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Congressman Jim McGovern and Senator Russ Feingold have introduced bills requiring an exit strategy and withdrawal deadline for U.S. forces to leave Afghanistan. "The Runaway General" and its aftermath further justify the need for such law.

In the words of an American soldier in Afghanistan, "You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?"

- The author, a constitutional law scholar and lecturer at the University of New York in Prague (UNYP), is organizing the UNYP 2010 symposium on "Meeting Crisis with Wisdom - toward improved practices in business, politics, law and education" Oct. 8 at the NYU Center in Prague 1.  

Bill Cohn can be reached at
features@praguepost.com