Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [91]
To save Afghanistan, General McChrystal proposed to save its people, consistent with the methods detailed in FM 3-24. “Success,” he wrote, “demands a comprehensive counterinsurgency (COIN) campaign,” one that “earns the support of the Afghan people and provides them with a secure environment.” Gaining the support of Afghans meant that Western armies in their country had to acquire “a better understanding of the people’s choices and needs.” A major impediment was the existing mind-set of U.S. and allied occupiers: “Our conventional warfare culture is part of the problem.” Western forces were “inexperienced in local languages and culture” and “poorly configured for COIN.”45
To grasp the true nature of Afghan culture, the prevailing Western military culture itself needed to undergo a wholesale transformation. “We must do things dramatically differently—even uncomfortably differently—to change how we operate, and also how we think.” Implicit in the McChrystal plan was an assumption that cultural sensitivity is like marksmanship: a skill in which soldiers can be trained. (Despite innumerable references to culture, the plan was oddly silent on the issue of religion, addressing neither Islam’s significance as a factor shaping Afghan identity nor the post-Christian milieu in which most American and other allied soldiers had been formed.)
According to McChrystal, the task of securing the Afghan people broke down into two requirements, each to be pursued simultaneously. One was to defeat a “resilient and growing insurgency”; the other, to remedy a widespread “crisis of confidence.” The roots of this crisis were complex and included “the weakness of [Afghan political] institutions, the unpunished abuse of power by corrupt officials and powerbrokers, a widespread sense of political disenfranchisement, and a longstanding lack of economic opportunity.”
The comprehensive counterinsurgency program devised by McChrystal would provide an antidote to each of these afflictions. Because properly resourcing that campaign would entail more money and more boots on the ground, McChrystal requested an additional forty thousand troops beyond the reinforcements that President Obama had already approved.
McChrystal ventured no estimates on how much his proposed counterinsurgency campaign was likely to cost. The commander’s reticence was perhaps understandable: The numbers, whether measured in dollars expended or lives lost, were almost certain to be daunting. One optimistic retired four-star general put the bill at approximately $600 billion: “In 10 years of $5 billion a month and with a significant front-end security component, we can leave an Afghan national army and police force and a viable government and roads and universities.”46
Nor did General McChrystal say how long saving Afghanistan was likely to take, choosing instead to emphasize that the months just ahead were sure to prove pivotal. “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term,” he wrote, “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” The United States could not afford to tarry. The imperative was to act, the sooner the better.
On one point McChrystal was adamant: To reject his advice was to ensure failure. Asked during a presentation at London’s International Institute of Strategic Studies whether a more modest approach with more modest goals (reportedly suggested by Vice President Joe Biden) could possibly work, McChrystal minced no words. “The short answer is: no. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”47 Or as he put it during an interview for a PBS documentary: “There is