General finds "McChrystal Ball" in Afghanistan

McChrystal predicts “real progress” in Afghanistan by December

Posted: 26 Jan 2010 02:20 PM PST

With all the talk in Washington about Amb. Karl Eikenberry's leaked cables opposing President Obama's surge strategy, his military counterpart Gen. Stanley McChrystal is right on message, predicting the path to victory will be clear by the time the troops start to leave in the middle of next year.

McChrystal is setting six-month milestones for progress in a talk in Kabul, shown in this video provided by NATO TV:

"I believe that by this coming summer, it's going to be obvious to the people in this room that things have changed, but it won't be obvious to people 3,000 miles or 10,000 miles away," he says in the video, predicting progress just as additional combat troops begin to arrive

"I think by next December, we'll be able to show with hard numbers and things, real progress," McChrystal goes on, without getting into specifics. "We'll be able to go ‘Look, here's more areas we cover, here's this, this, this.'"

Here's the kicker:

"And I think by the summer of 2011, it will be enough progress where the Afghans and the Taliban particularly, believe it, believe they're not going to win," McChrystal says, identifying the breaking point of the Taliban as around the same time U.S. forces are slated to begin withdrawing.

Seeming to contradict himself, McChrystal also speaks at length about the need to have a sustained presence in remote Afghan areas to convince locals to take the huge risk of turning on the Taliban and siding with Afghan and NATO forces. He talks about the need to stay and prove to locals that their long-term interest is in supporting and even defending the government before the coalition can transfer security to Afghan control.

McChrystal also addresses the controversial issue of reintegrating Taliban fighters. Most foreign fighters can't be reintegrated, he says, and most local fighters won't switch sides -- they will simply decide to stop attacking the government forces.

"I think a lot of reintegration won't be formal," says McChrystal. "It will just be, you'll just notice there are fewer of them."
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How does General McChrystal propose to do this? There is an old Arabian proverb that says: "Keep your friends close--hold your enemies closer." And that is exactly what the general and President Hamid Karzai are proposing. Their plan is to woo Taliban fighters away by offering them jobs, security by taking some of them of various hit lists and protecting themagainst retaliation and Karzai even wants to integrate some Taliban leaders back into the political scene.

This plan is going to be presented today in London. The hope is that those participating in the action in Afghanistan will provide the necesary funds (and perhaps troops) to make this work. Special envoy to AFghanistan, Richard Holbrooke agrees with the plan and Britain has announced it will help fund the effort.

Will this work? Only time can tell. Most of the tribes in Afghanistan have little faith in the government and in the karzai government in particular. The tribes themselves have trouble getting along together and within tribges, various factions often have uneasy an easy peace. It has just been announced that the largest Pashtun tribe in a major Taliban area, the Shinwari tribe, has decided to fight the Taliban. This is a significant break-through since this tribe has had members killed when they have attempted to fight back. But they apparently have had enough. We have been promised the Shinwaris a million dollars in various projects. This money will go directly to the tribal leaders and the local Karzai government will be left out of the formula.

Perhaps this is the first glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel and if we had only known that such a prgram would solve the problem, we could have saved nearly 5,000 American lives and tens of thousands of wounded Americans whose lives have been altered forever. And this doesn't even consider the thousand and thousands of Afghans and Iraqis who have been killed. And the fiscal cost would have been far less. This could have meant that billions of dollars might have been available to the people of this nation. Coming up with an affordable health care plan would have been much easier with all this extra money around.

IMHO, we still don't understand these people and neither have others who have come to Afghanistan for various reasons. We simply don't undrstand how deep their religious fervor runs. We think we know the right thing to do--kinda like the power plant we have built in Afghanistan that is too sophisticated and too expensive for the Afghanis to operate. But USAID knew what was best.

Only time and many more casualties will tell.