Change of chief doesn’t address policy problem
McClatchy Newspapers
WASHINGTON
President Barack Obama’s decision to accept Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s resignation and draft his superior, Gen. David Petraeus, to lead the war in Afghanistan eliminates a source of friction, but it doesn’t address the problems plaguing U.S. policy there.
The change in command, Obama made clear Wednesday, is a change in personnel, not in a policy that’s hampered by, among other things, the absence of a political strategy, rising U.S. casualties, growing ethnic tensions, endemic political corruption, the administration’s July 2011 deadline for beginning a troop withdrawal and a stalled offensive in the country’s second-largest city.
Petraeus, the head of the U.S. Central Command, is the main architect of the current strategy, which borrows some elements from the surge of additional U.S. troops he championed in Iraq, and he was largely responsible for putting McChrystal in charge of executing it.
If Petraeus’ appointment has any immediate effect, it’s likely to be on the prickly relationships among the strong personalities in charge of the war, including U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry, special envoy Richard Holbrooke and Vice President Joe Biden, and with the U.S.’s NATO allies and the Pakistanis.
“I think there will be a lot more of a ‘let’s work together’ spirit with Petraeus in charge, said Joseph Collins, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington.
However, whatever comity Petraeus brings — with his stature as the counterinsurgency general who saved the war in Iraq and his political savvy — is likely to be tested by disagreements over policy and personnel, some of which McChrystal and his aides vented about in their exit interview with Rolling Stone magazine.
As McClatchy reported earlier this month, a number of U.S. and allied military, intelligence and diplomatic officials have been warning for months that the American strategy in Afghanistan is failing and complaining that no one at a high level in the Obama administration wants to hear their discouraging words.
Eikenberry, a former three-star general, said in a cable that was leaked as the administration was crafting its strategy that he opposed deploying additional troops, the cornerstone of the current strategy, because Afghan President Hamid Karzai wasn’t a reliable partner.
All the additional troops are expected to be in Afghanistan by the end of the summer, bringing the U.S. troop level to 105,000. There are 94,000 U.S. troops and 48,000 allied forces there.
It remains to be seen whether Petraeus can persuade Eikenberry to embrace the strategy. If not, the next question will be whether America’s best-known general can persuade Obama to replace the senior U.S. official in Afghanistan, who technically outranks Petraeus.
Despite his involvement in the administration’s review and crafting of its Afghan strategy, Petraeus has distanced himself from the July 2011 withdrawal deadline, which some military officers and others think has prompted Karzai, the Taliban, neighboring Pakistan and Iran and others to jockey for leverage in post-American Afghanistan rather than cooperate with the U.S.
“Petraeus might carry more credibility than McChrystal did in reassuring the Afghan government and the regional powers that the start of a U.S. military withdrawal doesn’t mean an end to continued U.S. engagement in Afghanistan,” said Ronald Neumann, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007.
“Otherwise, nothing changes,” he continued. “You had a good general before, and now you have a good general who is also appreciative of political considerations in Washington.”
“The July 11, 2011, policy is confusing,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., an Air Force colonel and military lawyer, said Wednesday. “It undercuts the war effort. It empowers our enemies. It confuses our friends. And I think it needs to be re-evaluated.”
“If the president says, ‘no matter what Gen. Petraeus may recommend, we’re going to leave in July of 2011,’ we will lose this war,” Graham said.