The Land Where Theories of Warfare Go to Die
Obama, Petraeus, and the Cult of COIN in
By Robert Dreyfuss
TomDispatch
June 27, 2010
Less than a year ago, General David Petraeus saluted
smartly and pledged his loyal support for President
Obama's decision to start withdrawing
from
Obama decided (for the second time in 2009) to add
tens of thousands of additional American forces to
the war, he also slapped an 18-month deadline on the
military to turn the situation around and begin
handing security over to the bedraggled Afghan
National Army and police. Speaking to the nation
from
American forces to start withdrawing from
Here's the exchange, between Obama, Petraeus, and
Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, as reported by Jonathan Alter in his new
book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One:
OBAMA: "I want you to be honest with me. You can do
this in 18 months?"
PETRAEUS: "Sir, I'm confident we can train and hand
over to the ANA [Afghan National Army] in that time
frame."
OBAMA: "If you can't do the things you say you can
in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we
stay, right?"
PETRAEUS: "Yes, sir, in agreement."
MULLEN: "Yes, sir."
That seems unequivocal, doesn't it? Vice President
Joe Biden, famously dissed as Joe Bite-Me by one of
the now-disgraced aides of General Stanley
McChrystal in the Rolling Stone profile that got him
fired, seems to think so. Said Biden, again
according to Alter: "In July of 2011 you're going to
see a whole lot of people moving out. Bet on it."
In the
military, however, things are rarely what they seem.
Petraeus, the Centcom commander "demoted" in order
to replace McChrystal as
about what will happen next July -- and those second
thoughts are being echoed and amplified by a phalanx
of hawks, neoconservatives, and spokesmen for the
counterinsurgency (COIN) cult, including Henry
Kissinger, the Heritage Foundation, and the
editorial pages of the
too, are the lock-step members of the Republican
caucus on Capitol Hill, led by Senator John McCain.
In testimony before Congress just last week,
Petraeus chose his words carefully, but clearly
wasn't buying the notion that the July deadline
means much, nor did he put significant stock in the
fact that President Obama has ordered a top-to-
bottom review of Afghan policy in December.
According to the White House, that review will be a
make-or-break assessment of whether the Pentagon is
making any progress in the nine-year-long conflict
against the Taliban.
In his recent Senate testimony -- before he fainted,
and afterwards -- Petraeus minimized the
significance of the December review and cavalierly
declared that he "would not make too much of it."
Pressed by McCain, the general flouted Biden's view
by claiming that the deadline is a date "when a
process begins [and] not the date when the
heads for the exits."
The Right's Marching Orders for the President
Petraeus's defiant declaration that he wasn't
putting much stock in the president's intending to
hold the military command accountable for its
failure in
instant rebuke from the White House. Now, that same
Petraeus is in charge.
The dispute over the meaning of July 2011 is, and
will remain, at the very heart of the divisions
within the Obama administration over Afghan policy.
Last December, in that
tried to split the difference, giving the generals
what they wanted -- a lot more troops -- but fixing
a date for the start of a withdrawal. It was hardly
a courageous decision. Under intense pressure from
Petraeus, McChrystal, and the GOP, Obama assented to
the addition of 30,000
fact that McChrystal's unseemly lobbying for the
escalation amounted to a Douglas MacArthur-like
defiance of the primacy of civilian control of the
military. (Indeed, after a speech McChrystal gave in
approach to the war, Obama summoned the runaway
general to a tarmac outside
the riot act in Air Force One.)
If Obama's Afghan decision was a cave-in to the
brass and a potential generals' revolt, the
president also added that kicker of a deadline to
the mix, not only placating his political base and
minimizing Democratic unhappiness in Congress, but
creating a trap of sorts for Petraeus and
McChrystal. The message was clear enough: deliver
the goods, and fast, or we're heading out, whether
the job is finished or not.
Since then, Petraeus and McChrystal -- backed by
their chief enabler, Secretary of Defense Robert
Gates, a Republican holdover appointed to his
position by George W. Bush -- took every chance they
could to downplay and scoff at the deadline.
By appointing Petraeus last Wednesday, Obama took
the easy way out of the crisis created by
McChrystal's shocking comments in Rolling Stone. It
might not be inappropriate to quote that prescient
British expert on Afghan policy, Peter Townsend, who
said of the appointment: "Meet the new boss. Same as
the old boss."
On the other hand, Petraeus is not simply another
McChrystal. While McChrystal implemented COIN
doctrine, mixing in his obsession with "kinetic
operations" by
literally wrote the book -- namely, The U.S
Army/Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual.
If the COIN cult has a guru (whom all obey
unquestioningly), it's Petraeus. The aura that
surrounds him, especially among the chattering
classes of the
and he has a vast well of support among Republicans
and assorted right-wingers on Capitol Hill,
including the Holy Trinity: John McCain, Lindsay
Graham, and Joe Lieberman. Not surprisingly, there
have been frequent mentions of Petraeus as a
candidate for the GOP nomination for president in
2012, although Obama's deft selection of Petraeus
seems, once and for all, to have ruled out that
option, since the general will be very busy on the
other side of the globe for quite a while.
Even before the announcement that Petraeus had the
job, the right's mighty Wurlitzer had begun to blast
out its critique of the supposedly pernicious
effects of the July deadline. The Heritage
Foundation, in an official statement, proclaimed:
"The artificial
obviously caused some of our military leaders to
question our strategy in
need an artificial timeline for withdrawal. We need
a strategy for victory."
Writing in the
Kissinger cleared his throat and harrumphed: "The
central premise [of Obama's strategy] is that, at
some early point, the
turn over security responsibilities to an Afghan
government and national army whose writ is running
across the entire country. This turnover is to begin
next summer. Neither the premise nor the deadline is
realistic... Artificial deadlines should be abandoned."
And the Post itself, in the latest of a long-running
series of post-9/11 hawkish editorials, gave Obama
his marching orders: "He. should clarify what his
July 2011 deadline means. Is it the moment when `you
are going to see a whole lot of people moving out,'
as Vice President Biden has said, or `the point at
which a process begins. at a rate to be determined
by conditions at the time,' as General Petraeus
testified? We hope that the appointment of General
Petraeus means the president's acceptance of the
general's standard."
Is the COIN Cult Ascendant?
It's too early to say whether Obama's decision to
name Petraeus to replace his protégé McChrystal
carries any real significance when it comes to the
evolution of his Afghan war policy. The McChrystal
crisis erupted so quickly that Obama had no time to
carefully consider who might replace him and
Petraeus undoubtedly seemed like the obvious choice,
if the point was to minimize the domestic political
risks involved.
Still, it's worrying. Petraeus's COIN policy
logically demands a decade-long war, involving
labor-intensive (and military-centric) nation-
building, waged village by village and valley by
valley, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars
and countless
including civilians. That idea doesn't in the least
square with the idea that significant numbers of
troops will start leaving
Indeed, Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer with long
experience in the Middle East and
headed Obama's first Afghan policy review in
February 2009, told me (for an article in Rolling
Stone last month) that it's not inconceivable the
military will ask for even more troops, not agree to
fewer, next year.
The Post is right, however, that Obama needs to
grapple seriously with the deep divisions in his
administration. Having ousted one rebellious
general, the president now has little choice but to
confront -- or cave in to -- the entire COIN cult,
including its guru.
If Obama decides to take them on, he'll have the
support of many traditionalists in the
forces who reject the cult's preaching. Above all,
his key ally is bound to be those pesky facts on the ground.
go to die, and if the COIN theory isn't dead yet,
it's utterly failed so far to prove itself. The
vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of
Marja in
offensive into
Taliban and a seething tangle of tribal and
religious factions, once touted as the potential
turning point of the entire war, has been postponed
indefinitely. After nine years, the Pentagon has
little to show for its efforts, except ever-rising
casualties and money spent.
Perhaps Obama is still counting on
reverse the Taliban's momentum and win the war, even
though administration officials have repeatedly
rejected the notion that
militarily. David Petraeus or no, the reality is
that the war will end with a political settlement
involving President Karzai's government, various
Afghan warlords and power brokers, the remnants of
the old
Taliban's sponsors in
Making all that work and winning the support of
Afghanistan's neighbors -- including India, Iran,
and
diplomats managed to pull it off, the
that
On the other hand, it won't be pretty to look at it.
It will be a decentralized mess, an uneasy balance
between enlightened Afghans and benighted, Islamic
fundamentalist ones, and no doubt many future
political disagreements will be settled not in
conference rooms but in gun battles. Three things it
won't be: It won't be
base for Al Qaeda. And it won't be host to tens of
thousands of
The only silver lining in the Petraeus cloud is that
the general has close ties to the military in
support to the insurgency in
decides to pursue a political and diplomatic
solution between now and next July, Petraeus's
however, is running out.
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