For President Obama, Afghanistan began as a choice of what was morally or practically right and is fast becoming a case of what is politically expedient. A longer and messier war is not what any Democrat incumbent would choose to get into, but at the same time, no US president could get out of Kabul without facing accusations he’d let go of the frontline in the war on terror.
With General McChrystal’s recent bumbling, that choice between the politically and practically expedient will again come to the fore. It is politically expedient to fire McChrystal immediately: putting the personal sniping aside, the special forces veteran has clearly expressed in his Rolling Stone profile a clear vote of no confidence in most of Obama’s national security team and appeared to doubt the commitment and understanding of the commander in chief himself.
Practically, however, firing McChrystal would be tantamount to accepting defeat in Afghanistan. America knows that Afghan President Karzai is a spent force and an unsuitable partner for their grand schemes, but the short timetable they’re on means they put up with his alleged corruption and the rigging of an election, and just played the hand they have. They had no choice.
With McChrystal, they do have a choice about whether or not he stays, but face an even tighter timetable if they try to bring in a replacement. He is, essentially, the counterinsurgency strategy.
His relationship with Karzai is much heralded – indeed he is the only senior American to remain on good terms with the Kabul chief. He’s the one putting emphasis on a drop in civilian casualties, and on governance.
These ideas are not his alone – but part of a broader strategic rethink. But he is the man who’s had to put them into play and put into place subordinates who can get it right. Changing him means rethinking the chain of command in the field at an absolutely vital time: the offensive to retake Kandahar should have already started and is imminent. They’ve got six months to show progress.
When examining how the world’s only superpower – faced with its longest war ever – got itself into a “can’t live with him, can’t live without him” position over both its top general and the Afghan president, it’s worth thinking about their media strategy.
McChrystal’s people are surprisingly engaging with the media. Cynics might say there is a reason: they can’t win the war on the ground practically, but they can win the battle of “perception”.
In shorthand: if the media are convinced things are not as bad as they could be, then it’ll be a lot easier to sell to the American people as a victory of sorts, or an acceptable defeat. So be nice to the press and they might be nice back. McChrystal’s people are very open and generous, in a way that is often disarming, if you’ve dealt with the often dry and distant US military’s press teams before.
This particular article was an obvious disaster. The unfettered access Rolling Stone got exposed the relaxed “locker room behaviour’ (as one commentator has called it) of a team who should have been more reserved at the apex of American power.
McChrystal himself had little experience with the media before he became the Nato mission’s head because, as one aide told me, “he’s had jobs in the military for so long where he wasn’t supposed to exist”.
Stepping out of the covert operations field and into the political limelight required the general to hold his tongue 24/7 in ways he and his team had never had to imagine before. And Rolling Stone was exactly the sort of publication where that “bonhomie” could come across worst.
Where do we go from now? There is perhaps one solution for Obama, but it is politically fraught. General David Petraeus, the former Iraq commander who now heads US Central Command and by extension is McChrsytal’s boss and mentor, could take over the Afghan mission.
He has the stature, experience and the relationships to pick this ball up. But he is also frequently mentioned as a potential Republican presidential nominee. If he fixes Afghanistan, those “wimps in the White House” McChrystal’s team complained about, may be evicted in 2013 by the man they turned to clean up Afghanistan.
If he loses, or finds himself hampered by his political masters, then the sniping over personality and policy we’ve seen with McChrystal could be a slim shadow of what is to come.
Either way, whether McChrystal goes or stays, the war Obama tried to handle with moral and practical valour has become an inherited, deeply political anvil.