Reactions within the US establishment to the firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal indicate that disparaging remarks by McChrystal and his aides concerning President Obama and other civilian officials published in a Rolling Stone article were not the principal cause of his dismissal.
Rather, the article brought to a head the deepening crisis arising from the failure of the US military to suppress the popular resistance in Afghanistan to Washingtonâs colonial-style war. Dissatisfaction with McChrystalâs leadership had been mounting within the Obama administration since the failure of the offensive in Marjah launched last February. The decision announced earlier this month to delay for at least three months the assault on Kandahar was widely seen as an embarrassing setback.
Despite McChrystalâs reputation as a ruthless practitioner of counterinsurgency warfare, responsible for the killing of thousands of Iraqis, the general has more recently been the target of growing criticism that the effectiveness of the operation in Afghanistan was being undermined by his excessive concern over civilian casualties.
That concern has nothing to do with humanitarian considerations. Rather, it is based on the cold calculationâthe Rolling Stone article refers to McChrystal's "insurgent math"âthat for every innocent person killed, ten new enemies are created.
The article, written by Michael Hastings, deals relatively briefly with the remarks of McChrystal and his aides about US civilian officials in Afghanistan. They are predictably crude, and could hardly have come as a surprise to Obama, let alone to the Pentagon. They are familiar with the fascistic and debased character of McChrystalâs entourage. Hastings concisely describes the generalâs staff as âa handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs.â
The comments made by McChrystal about Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden and special envoy Richard Holbrooke have generated the most media attention. But Hastings devotes far more space relating the complaints of American soldiers that McChrystal is tying their hands by enforcing rules of engagement which limit the use of air strikes and mortar fire against potential civilian targets and restrict the ability of US troops to enter the homes of Afghan civilians.
Hastings writes that âMcChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the US military has ever encountered in a war zone.â He continues: âBut however strategic they may be, McChrystalâs new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. âBottom line?â says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan, âI would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiersâ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing.ââ
Describing a meeting near Kandahar between McChrystal and disaffected troops, Hastings writes: âThe soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to fightâlike they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal.â
Whether this view is really widely held among soldiers is not clear. But it appears that this argument is gaining support within the Washington policy-making elite and within the media. Hastings indicates his own standpointâand, more broadly, that of many of McChrystalâs establishment criticsâwhen he declares: âWhen it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystalâs side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khanâand he wasnât hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny.â
The New York Times weighed in on Wednesday, before the White House meeting between Obama and McChrystal at which the general submitted his resignation, with an article by its Afghan war correspondent, C. J. Chivers, headlined âWarriors Vexed by Rules For War.â
The article makes the case for the US to âtake the gloves offâ and dramatically escalate its assault on the Afghan population. Chivers quotes unnamed soldiers denouncing McChrystal for limiting the use of air strikes and artillery, and declares: âAs levels of violence in Afghanistan climb, there is a palpable and building sense of unease among troops surrounding one of the most confounding questions about how to wage the war: when and how lethal force should be used.â
He continues: âThe rules have shifted risks from Afghan civilians to Western combatants⊠Young officers and enlisted soldiers and MarinesâŠspeak of âbeing handcuffedâŠââ
âNo one wants to advocate loosening rules that might see more civilians killed,â he writes. But this is precisely what The New York Times is demanding.
In its lead editorial published on Thursday, entitled âAfghanistan After McChrystal,â the Times demands a âserious assessment now of the military and civilian strategies.â It then writes, in chilling language: âUntil the insurgents are genuinely bloodied they will keep insisting on a full restoration of their repressive power. Reports that some State Department officials are also advocating a swift deal with the Taliban are worrisome.â [Emphasis added].
This statement, by the authoritative voice of the liberal Democratic Party policy-making establishment, provides an insight into the deeper issues involved in McChrystalâs removal. Apparently, for the Times, the United States has not pursued with sufficient vigor the work of âseriously bloodyingâ those in Afghanistan opposed to foreign occupation during more than eight years of war.
Tens of thousands of Afghans have already been killed by US and NATO forcesânobody knows the full extent of the slaughter since Washington does not bother to count its victims. Tens of thousands more have been wounded, jailed or tortured in US prisons.
This campaign of killing and terror is aimed at drowning in blood an entirely legitimate struggle by the Afghan people for national liberation against a colonial occupier. The main problem the US faces is that after eight years of war and more than three decades of US subversion and provocation, popular resistance by the Afghan masses against American imperialism is growing. The answer of the US ruling elite is to murder more Afghans.
The war in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity, and those who are perpetuating it are war criminals.
The struggle to arouse opposition in the working class within the United States and internationally must be renewed.
Barry Grey