I have no particular opinion on the firing of General McKiernan as commander of Afghan operations other than to say that I don't think we are losing in Afghanistan, I don't think we need many more troops to defeat the enemy, and I'm worried about supplying more troops in Afghanistan. How much of this situation is "blamed" on McKiernan, I don't know. But a commander's job is to win and I have no problem in theory with replacing even good men and good commanders who aren't winning with somebody else. That at least, focuses the minds of the new people tremendously. Troops die when a commander doesn't win. I thank McKiernan for his long service but I won't feel sorry for him over this. A loss of career doesn't stack up sympathy-wise to death and injury.
McKiernan, it seems, has spent most of his 11 months asking for more troops rather than formulating a plan to use what he has to win:
The Obama Administration has made Afghanistan the central front in the war on terror over the past month, it had concluded that McKiernan's tenure there had involved too much wheel-spinning even as the Taliban extended its reach. There was not enough of the "new thinking" demanded by Gates. "It's time for new leadership and fresh eyes," Gates said, refusing to elaborate. He noted that Joints Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, and General David Petraeus, who as chief of U.S. Central Command oversees the Afghan war, had endorsed the move. Officers have typically served about 24 months in the slot, meaning McKiernan had served less than half his expected tour.
Military experts anticipate that U.S. policy in Afghanistan more militarily pointed as well as politically deft, once McChrystal and Rodrigues, his 1976 West Point classmate and fellow Afghan vet, are confirmed by the Senate. "McKiernan did his best - he was just the wrong guy," says retired Army officer and military analyst Ralph Peters. "McChrystal will ask for more authority, not more troops." By the end of this year, the U.S. expects to have close to 70,000 troops in Afghanistan, including 21,000 ordered there by Obama.
If anything, this reinforces my view that most problems are solved by better leadership rather than more troops. I still have trouble seeing how more troops are going to solve the problem of crushing the Taliban in Afghanistan. Heck, I have trouble seeing just how we are losing the war. That conclusion doesn't add up, to me.
I know that as we win in Iraq, Afghanistan is supposed to become the main front. Yet even smashing the Taliban with an Afghanistan surge won't solve the problem. Even sealing off the border with our troops (and I'm not assuming this is even easy given the force-to-space ratio) and crushing jihadis in the interior of Afghansitan will be undone once our surge recedes unless the Afghan security forces can take our place to seal the border and keep Pakistan-based jihadis out.
Given that most of our Afghanistan problem lies across the border in Pakistan where we have little ability to affect the fight, it almost seems as if the administration is viewing Pakistan--whose nuclear weapons are a major concern should jihadis seize control in Pakistan, as long a shot as that is right now--as the main front, and Afghanistan is the cross-border operation designed to prevent support from going from Afghansitan to Pakistan.
The debate over what our objectives are in Afghanistan may depend on what our objectives are for the region. Just what is the main front?
UPDATE: Strategypage states that McKiernan is a good officer, but that McChrystal is just better:
The United States has replaced the current commander of American forces in Afghanistan, general David McKiernan, with lieutenant general Stanley McChrystal. McKiernan had done a good job, but it is believed that McChrystal, a career infantry and special operations officer, is more capable of innovating and developing new tactics and techniques needed to deal with the unique situation in Afghanistan.
This fits with my view that I haven't seen any obvious signs of command failure, other than the possibility that he was not doing enough while waiting for new troops. If so, McKiernan should have been allowed to leave in a better manner than this. I never agreed that Casey failed in Iraq since under his command we had made progress through spring 2006--but he did fail to adapt to the post-Samarra environment where Iraqis were incapable of making noticable progress to defeat the enemies who were intent on inciting civil war. And Casey was allowed to continue his Army career. Replacing McKiernan may have been the right thing to do, but the manner may have been unjust.
