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.

Joel Award: Charles Krauthammer

It is time to give out the Joel Award. The award goes any celebrity, pundit, blogger or politician that purposely contradicts himself or herself.

This 2004 comedy gem by Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer is worth revisiting. Krauthammer's neoconservative declares President Bush's Afghanistan invasion a resounding success.

President Bush put in place a military campaign that did in two months what everyone had said was impossible: defeat an entrenched, fanatical, ruthless regime in a territory that had forced the great British and Soviet empires into ignominious retreat. Bush followed that by creating in less than three years a fledgling pro-American democracy in a land that had no history of democratic culture and was just emerging from 25 years of civil war.

In 2009, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai rigged the election to favor himself. Karzai's brother, Ahmed Wali, is one of the most powerful heroin traffickers in the world. The Taliban presence is at it's strongest since the invasion. A 2007 International Council on Security and Development report found the Taliban controlled 54 percent of Afghanistan. Apparently, the Taliban didn't realize Krauthammer declared Bush the victor.

Krauthammer on President Barack Obama's West Point speech.

No one expected Obama to do a Henry V or a Churchill. But Obama could not even manage a George W. Bush, who, at an infinitely lower ebb in power and popularity, opposed by the political and foreign policy establishments and dealing with a war effort in far more dire straits, announced his surge -- Iraq 2007 -- with outright rejection of withdrawal or retreat. His implacability was widely decried at home as stubbornness, but heard loudly in Iraq by those fighting for and against us as unflinching -- and salutary -- determination.

What about Bush's handling of Afghanistan in 2007. Krauthammer is suffering from selective memory loss. He declared mission accomplished in Afghanistan. For Afghanistan's sake Obama should avoid doing a Bush.

Krauthammer should be ignored on foreign policy matters. He argued for the Iraq invasion on the basis of weapons of mass destruction. His neocon heart supports torture. Do neocons, such as Krauthammer get to decide who is a terrorist? The neocons' track record wasn't so great on WMDs. How many innocent people will have to be tortured to satisfy Krauthammer's thirst for blood? If there are innocent people tortured don't expect, people like Krauthammer, to turn themselves in to the authorities. They might be tortured by the oppressive justice system they wished to create.

Obama Firm On Afghanistan Deadline

CBS News' Chip Reid reports President Barack Obama is going to stay firm on the July 2011 for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan.

I asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs if senators were incorrect calling the date a "target."

After the briefing, Gibbs went to the president for clarification. Gibbs then called me to his office to relate what the president said. The president told him it IS locked in – there is no flexibility. Troops WILL start coming home in July 2011. Period. It's etched in stone. Gibbs said he even had the chisel.

I do not see Obama being able to keep that promise. The Hamid Karzai government is corrupt. Former Deputy Special Representative Peter Galbraith says he was ordered to cover up the fixed election.

“At other critical stages in the election process,” he wrote in The Washington Post, “I was similarly ordered not to pursue the issue of fraud.

The New York Times reports Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of Afghanistan's president, is a major player in the heroin trade. Afghanistan's CIA station chief attempted to have President Karzai move his brother out of the country to no avail.

The current number of Afghan born troops is 90,000. The police force is 93,000. Police jobs are auctioned off. High ranking police officers use their positions to enrich themselves. Afghanistan is ranked as the second most corrupt country in the world. There is no realistic way for Afghanistan to reach the benchmarks Obama has set.

Where Rape Isn't A Crime

Afghan President Hamid Karzai signed into law Article 132. The law states ""a wife is obliged to fulfill the sexual desires of her husband." The international community and blogosphere has reacted negatively.

The United States, NATO, Canada and the United Nations have voiced concern about the law, after some Afghan lawmakers said it legalizes marital rape, but Karzai said their criticisms were based on a wrong translation or misinterpretation of the law.

"We understand the concerns of our allies in the international community. Those concerns may be out of an inappropriate or not so good translation of the law or a misinterpretation of this," Karzai told reporters.

Karzai said a copy of the law he had seen did not reflect the criticisms and concerns of Afghanistan's Western backers.

The Time article translation Article 132: "a wife is obliged to fulfill the sexual desires of her husband." The United Nations stated: "“Article 132 legalises the rape of a wife by her husband." Hazara Party leader Ustad Mohammad Akbari has the audacity to claim the law protects women's rights.

Ustad Mohammad Akbari, an MP and the leader of a Hazara political party, said the president had supported the law in order to curry favour among the Hazaras. But he said the law actually protected women's rights.

"Men and women have equal rights under Islam but there are differences in the way men and women are created. Men are stronger and women are a little bit weaker; even in the west you do not see women working as firefighters."

Akbari said the law gave a woman the right to refuse sexual intercourse with her husband if she was unwell or had another reasonable "excuse". And he said a woman would not be obliged to remain in her house if an emergency forced her to leave without permission.

A woman doesn't have to have sex if she is sick. It doesn't matter that she was forced into an arranged marriage or hates her husband. If he wants it she puts out. In case your wondering, the Hazara pushed for Article 132.