Michael Hastings’ article in Rolling Stone about Afghanistan and General Stanley McChrystal has gotten famous very quickly as a result of some on-and-off-the-record comments by McChrystal and his staff about people in the Obama administration. Since the first rule of being interviewed is to be clear about the rules of attribution, and since McChrytal is notorious for pushing limits and his attention to detail, it seems obvious enough that the General knew he was going to create a firestorm.

However, the ad hominem jabs at Joe Biden, Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry and Obama himself (only Hillary Clinton is singled out for praise), are in a way beside the point. Hastings’ article raises questions about the viability of a counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan when many in al Qaeda have picked up and moved across the border to Pakistan. The piece also notes that the highly restrictive rules of engagement are deeply unpopular with the troops on the ground — how long can that go on, particularly with an all-volunteer fighting force?

Hastings himself seems clearly to believe that the US has no vital strategic interest in being in Afghanistan. Be that as it may, his piece raises important questions. According to Hastings, the only effective conqueror of that screwed-up country was none other than Genghis Khan, whose idea of counter-insurgency strategy involved a lot of starved cities and heads on pikes.

Our guess is that McChrystal wants something and has chosen this odd approach to getting the attention he wants. Whether he wants to be fired, or wants more troops, or a change in strategy, or something else entirely is unclear to us. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 23rd, 2010 at 5:52 am and is filed under Democrats, General, MSM, Religion, Republicans, War. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.