Matthew Yglesias » US to Reduce Airstrikes in Afghanistan

Jun 22nd, 2009 at 8:27 am

US to Reduce Airstrikes in Afghanistan

(Defense Department Photo)

General Stanley McChrystal, the new US commander in Afghanistan, is off to a good start in my book if he follows through on this pledge to reduce the number of airstrikes in Afghanistan. It hasn’t always been entirely clear to me what to make of the plan to increase the quantity of American forces serving in that theater. But the optimistic case, in my view, has always been that this would be the consequence—more boots on the ground and fewer bombs from the air ought to equal more efficacy at protecting Afghan civilians and fewer accidental killings of Afghan civilians.

Comments
22

Filed under: Afghanistan, National Security, Stanley McChrystal

22 Responses to “US to Reduce Airstrikes in Afghanistan”

Moral Panicker Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:32 am
Right. I neither know nor pretend to know if this is really a good idea, but it sure seems like dropping bombs from airplanes has its limits, especially in a counter-insurgency situation like in Afghanistan.
DJF Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 8:58 am
Some people think that dropping bombs shows you are powerful, but it really shows that while you have the power to destroy you don’t have the power to control. Real power would be the ability to send a couple of police to the location and arrest those who are breaking the law. That is real control. But the reality is that the US bombs because its too dangerous to not only send a couple of cops but to send in a battalion of infantry.

Also by not having control on the ground it leaves in the hands of the locals and insurgents the ability to control the news about the event. Even if the US manages to bomb only insurgents its easy enough for the insurgents to put out propaganda which says that innocents were bombed. And without control on the ground its hard to tell who should be the target so we get real incidents of bombing the innocent.
rapier Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:03 am
The Air Force is going to be pissed off. It’s bad enough the Army has finally gotten back into the air with the drones and can now drop shit on the defenseless, their specially, but now this. Well it’s just a minor setback. The inevitable dynamic which pushes us to bomb somebody, anybody, will not end. It will never end.
Why oh why Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:06 am
Marvelous. Perhaps M. McChrystal can also tell us what he knows about torture at Bagram, and what the hell we’re still doing in Afghanistan.
Don Williams Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:07 am
When your Warthogs start showing up painted TEAL you kinda know that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is on the way out. Either than or Martha Stewart has been appointed Secretary of the Air Force.
James Gary Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:23 am
When your Warthogs start showing up painted TEAL you kinda know that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is on the way out.

Yes, but it still has a cartoon shark face painted on the nose to show that the time-honored American values of belligerence and child-like silliness remain in place.
Max424 Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 9:33 am
I believe the tank buster in the photo is more of a turquoise than a teal. Here is a more manly A-10 in bone gray.

http://jetpix.com/wingsoffreedom/A-10_800.jpg
Midland Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 10:26 am
Wow, the usual suspects are checking in fast today . . .

The inevitable dynamic which pushes us to bomb somebody, anybody, will not end. It will never end.

The eeyores . . . check.

Marvelous. Perhaps M. McChrystal can also tell us what he knows about torture at Bagram, and what the hell we’re still doing in Afghanistan.

Concern trolls . . . check. Read up on McChrystal’s public statements, he’ll probably have an answer you can
bring in for debate purposes.

When your Warthogs start showing up painted TEAL you kinda know that “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” is on the way out. Either than or Martha Stewart has been appointed Secretary of the Air Force.

Homophobes . . . check.

Yes, but it still has a cartoon shark face painted on the nose to show that the time-honored American values of belligerence and child-like silliness remain in place.

Cultural snobbery and Ameriphobic sneers . . . check and check. Hey, JG, humans have been putting art, prayers, slogans, pet names, and religious images on their ships, boats, etc. for at least 5000 years. The American tendency to put an anti-military establishment, snarky tone into their imagery dates back a couple of centuries. It used to be considered a virtue, a symbol of the basic anti-war nature of our culture.
Why oh why Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:23 am
Hey Midland, here is something for you to debate:

In 2006, Esquire sent me around the country to interview military interrogators with a Human Rights Watch investigator named Marc Garlasco. One of those men worked at Camp Nama, a small base near Baghdad where a Special Forces task force was interrogating Iraqis in an effort to find the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq. It was so secret that the officers went by false names there. Bad things happened. They doused people in cold water, used isolation and stress positions and sleep manipulation. These methods all appeared on a checklist. To use each one, they had to check the appropriate box and get approval.

The chain of command for that approval went through General McChrystal. Even more damning, the interrogator told us that he actually saw McChrystal in the camp while such acts were occurring. He also said that his supervisor told him and his colleagues that McChrystal had made a personal promise that the Red Cross would never be allowed into the camp — a violation of our treaty obligations under the Geneva Conventions, which is a violation of the law that we used to follow before the Bush sdministration.

http://www.esquire.com/the-side/richardson-report/stan-mcchrystal-torture-051909#ixzz0JAjQrYSK&D

As the Iraqi insurgency intensified in early 2004, an elite Special Operations forces unit converted one of Saddam Hussein’s former military bases near Baghdad into a top-secret detention center. There, American soldiers made one of the former Iraqi government’s torture chambers into their own interrogation cell. They named it the Black Room.

In the windowless, jet-black garage-size room, some soldiers beat prisoners with rifle butts, yelled and spit in their faces and, in a nearby area, used detainees for target practice in a game of jailer paintball. Their intention was to extract information to help hunt down Iraq’s most-wanted terrorist, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, according to Defense Department personnel who served with the unit or were briefed on its operations.
(…)
General Brown’s command declined requests for interviews with several former task force members and with Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who leads the Joint Special Operations Command, the headquarters at Fort Bragg, N.C., that supplies the unit’s most elite troops.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/19/international/middleeast/19abuse.html?pagewanted=all

A war criminal may be in charge of the Afghanistan War, but that’s no need for “concern”, of course.
John I Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:42 am
Not just cartoon shark faces, but little hash kill marks for each Afghan wedding party bombed.

Makes me want to throw up every time we hear about one of those.
Midland Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
A war criminal may be in charge of the Afghanistan War, but that’s no need for “concern”, of course.

That’s much better!

Let’s see what the man does now that he’s out in charge in full view of the public. Was he an active partcipant back then? Just kissing up, like Petraeus? In the wrong place at the wrong time? Covering his own ass while trying to do his job? It’s important, as there are people from Special Ops who’ve been battling the torturers for some time.

The number of active and recently active generals who probably should be courtmartialed or sacked for war crimes, other felonies, relgious fanaticism, and general incompetence and corruption is pretty high. If and when the anti-torture forces get a real grip on the Pentagon establishment, we will have a chance to purge them. Meanwhile, Special Ops policy is anti-torture, for all the most obvious reasons. This is McChrystal’s chance to make good on his past failings and do the job right.
joe from Lowell Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:29 pm
I knew the sacking of the old theater commander and the appointment of McChrystal just a couple of days after another civilian-killing airstrike was not coincidental.

You know, eeyores and concern trolls, it would help your credibility if you could manage to at least feign some happiness when something you’ve been pretending to care about for years – changing doctrine to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan – happens.
Why oh why Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 12:49 pm
concern trolls

Again? Some people are actually to the left of Obama, you know. It is not even very difficult these days.

it would help your credibility if you could manage to at least feign some happiness when something you’ve been pretending to care about for years – changing doctrine to reduce civilian casualties in Afghanistan – happens.

Yeah because if a guy in an uniform says it, it has to be true. Especially if he is suspected of war crimes. And note that a higher number of troops will make “mistakes” more likely, and counter what is described here.
joe from Lowell Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Yeah because if a guy in an uniform says it, it has to be true.

Oddly enough, when military commanders say things Why oh Why doesn’t like, he never questions their credibility. Phony, selective skepticism – did you learn that from the global warming deniers?

And note that a higher number of troops will make “mistakes” more likely…

I never knew that “note” was a synonym for “pretend.” More troops on the ground, confirming targets with their own eyeballs before firing, is significantly safer than aerial bombardment. The fact that the slaughters we’ve all heard about in the Af-Pak War have all been the consequence of air strikes should indicate to an objective observer that they are a more dangerous, less reliable use of force than boots on the ground.

Suddenly, after all of these years of complaining – rightly, I should add – about the dangers of air strikes, you’re deciding that they’re not so bad after all. Oh, and this happens to occur on the day you read that we’re curtailing air strikes to reduce civilian deaths.

It’s becoming clear that, like “Saddam didn’t attack us, we’re fighting the wrong people,” concern over the deaths of Afghan civilians in air strikes was just a convenient point to bring up in a debate, and not a genuinely-held belief, for a certain segment of the anti-war left.
joe from Lowell Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm
Some people are actually to the left of Obama, you know.

Yes, most concern trolls these days are to Obama’s left.
Why oh why Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 1:41 pm
Oddly enough, when military commanders say things Why oh Why doesn’t like, he never questions their credibility.

Military commanders only parrot whatever the official talking points are, never trust them; unless they actually criticize the policies they are supposed to enforce – but then, they are usually fired.

Suddenly, after all of these years of complaining – rightly, I should add – about the dangers of air strikes, you’re deciding that they’re not so bad after all.

Huh? I’d rather leave those poor Afghans alone and get the troops out; Bin Laden is long gone and I don’t see any reason to wage the Afghan War II, especially with such a ruthless new commander.

But I suppose worrying about endless wars and torture is “concern-trolling” now. Our Commander-in-Chief said it was the good war, and if we don’t bomb Afghanistan (surgically, with surge-eyeballs), the almighty Al Qaeda will somehow regroup and kill us all.
cmholm Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:05 pm
Granted, as a whole, reducing the number of air strikes reduces the odds that you’re going to kill civilians. Unfortunately, Gen McChrystal’s blanket statement leaves him seemingly oblivious to why a modern army uses close air support in the first place: it’s a massive force multiplier, and reduces the odds of your own guys getting shot.

Without readily available bombs or artillery, performance on the battlefield comes down to your rifle against the other guy’s rifle, and the training, experience, and motivation guiding them.

Given the situation in Afghanistan, that doesn’t give us as much of an advantage as you’d think.
Midland Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
Without readily available bombs or artillery, performance on the battlefield comes down to your rifle against the other guy’s rifle, and the training, experience, and motivation guiding them . . . Given the situation in Afghanistan, that doesn’t give us as much of an advantage as you’d think.

Which, as WOW would likely point out, this entire “nation building” war was a stupid idea in the first place. We didn’t have the resources to pull it off without civilian-killing “force multipliers” to begin with. And then we invaded Iraq!

There’s no help for it, at this point. McChrystal needs to counterattack hard enough to force negotiations, persuade the Taliban to sell out Al Queda so we can claim a “victory,” then we get out.
joe from Lowell Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:44 pm
Huh? I’d rather leave those poor Afghans alone and get the troops out

That’s all well and good, but for you to refuse to acknowledge the significance of curtailing air strikes on the well-being of Afghan civilians makes it blindingly obvious that their well-being is not what motivates you.
joe from Lowell Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 7:46 pm
As was the case in 2001-2002, the only “force multiplier” we need in Afghanistan is the support of the locals against the Taliban.

Putting more boots on the ground to provide greater security, and using tactics that reduce civilian casualties as low as we can make them, is exactly the type of strategic thinking we need.
Richard Steven Hack Says:
June 22nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Midland is a moron. There’s no such thing as “counterattacking” the Taliban hard enough to force negotiations. First of all, the US doesn’t have NEARLY enough troops in place to do that, nor will they unless Obama ramps up the forces by another 250,000 – which the US does not HAVE.

Second, the Taliban already control much of Afghanistan, by all accounts (except the US military, of course, which never admits defeat even when leaving on the last helicopter from Saigon.)

Third, McChrystal is like every other Pentagon general – a liar by definition. We’ve heard this “reduce airstrikes” crap more in Afghanistan – and the numbers went up, as did the civilian casualties.

Fourth, McChrystal was definitely in the loop about the tortures and other war crimes conducted by his Special Operations group. There’s little doubt about that.

Anybody who thinks Afghanistan can be turned around by another X thousand US troops is a total idiot. Which includes Matt, of course.
beowulf Says:
June 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 am
RSH,

Just the man I was looking for! I was going to say this may only be of interest to you, but Stanley McChrystal was instrumental in getting the Army to adopt Brazilian Jui-Jitsu as the Army’s official martial art (who needs the Marine Corps Martial Arts program, when you have the Gracies on your team).
http://www.samuraiarts.net/2009/03/brazilian-jiu-jitsu-martial-art-to-be.html

Matt Yglesias

US to Reduce Airstrikes in Afghanistan

22 Responses to “US to Reduce Airstrikes in Afghanistan”

Blogroll