Afghanistan Problems Go Up Chain of Command

President Barack Obama announced he was accepting Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation. I grew up in a military family. So, I wasn't surprised by the statements or behavior of McChrystal or his team in the Rolling Stone article. What struck me is the lack of faith in the chain of command. McChrystal has no confidence in the White House. The soldiers have zero confidence in McChrystal and the COIN strategy.

During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. "We aren't putting fear into the Taliban," one soldier says.

"Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing," McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can't kill your way out of Afghanistan. "The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn't work."

"I'm not saying go out and kill everybody, sir," the soldier persists. "You say we've stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don't believe that's true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it's getting."

"I agree with you," McChrystal says. "In this area, we've not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I'm telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?"

A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn't have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. "That's the way this game is," McChrystal says. "It's complex. I can't just decide: It's shirts and skins, and we'll kill all the shirts."

As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn't succeeded at easing the men's anger. He makes one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. "There's no way I can make that easier," he tells them. "No way I can pretend it won't hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you're doing a great job. Don't let the frustration get to you." The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren't buying it.

The problem isn't McChrystal and Obama. They both wanted to place more troops in Afghanistan and have a more aggressive counter-insurgency strategy. The true problem is mission is not working. The Afghan people have no faith in President Hamid Karzai. Not without good reason: Karzai has been unable to create an Afghan military and police force. The Karzai regime has rigged an election and links to heroin distribution. At a certain point stay the course becomes insanity.

Update: Joshua Holland got the same message from the Rolling Stone article. Holland finds a depressing Obama quote I haven't seen before.

"There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic development," the president says. "As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier."

Obama is sighting lights as progress. Americans can not walk safely in most of Afghanistan but aren't the lights pretty.