Heaven Forbid Journalists Report Facts

Barrett Brown wrote a lengthy and hilarious post over at Vanity Fair about conservative reaction to Michael Hastings’ blockbuster Rolling Stone piece that brought down McChrystal. Couched in an attack on National Review (too easy!), it’s a rather damning indictment of the media in general. To wit:

Unlike many of this country’s most respected commentators, Hastings did not spend the better part of a decade repeating conventional wisdom about our allegedly unprecedented success in two wars that have already proven to be abject failures, and thus he has no reason to simply take the word of some or another confused presidential administration that everything is under control, or will be after some additional expenditure of blood and treasure.

Another taste, for color:

I myself am a subscriber [of National Review] and find myself constantly distracted by the ads, many of which are written to look like articles and which routinely conjure up dubious global financial entities in order to convince the publication’s readers to buy coins in exchange for some unspecified number of payments in order that they might also receive a free safe. Advertisers know their audience, naturally.

Read the whole thing.

More Important Considerations Than Personnel

What the hell were McChrystal and co. thinking? I don’t know. (Yes I do: they were drunk.) But this much I know to be true: their complaints about the civilian leadership are a hell of a lot less important than the actual on-the-ground success of their strategy in Afghanistan. Matt Yglesias makes the necessary point:

Back in the real world it seems obvious to me that the Obama administration’s actual McChrystal-related problem is simply that the situation in Afghanistan is deeply problematic. The hoped-for improvements in governance and the credibility of Hamid Karzai’s regime have not emerged. The population in much of the country remains pro-Taliban, anti-Karzai, and anti-ISAF. This is a big problem. And the portrait that emerges in the Rolling Stone article is of a military command that knows it’s not really making progress but doesn’t see the door open to any alternative policies. It’s a huge problem—much bigger than the question of what to do or not about one general.

What you have to remember here is that McChrystal is the architect of the bold and controversial Af-Pak strategy announced last December. The outcome of the months-long “strategic review” was buy-in to his vision. And that vision is failing. However, I don’t think that if McChrystal does leave, as is looking increasingly likely, this affair will occasion any change in strategy — the basic underpinnings of the current strategy are time and patience, after all. There’s still a year to go until the July 2011 deadline, nearly six months until the December review. Obama cannot be seen as capricious in this. But it does seem clear that McChrystal, brilliant strategist though he may be, is not the man for the job.

War and Peace, Time and Patience: The Afghan Surge

War stands sui generis among issues of public concern. Nothing is less repugnant, or less reflexive, to the human psyche. But as my generation and that of my parents—the baby boomers—drift further from any direct experience with a “war of necessity,” war’s basic trickiness stands in ever starker relief against the ambivalence of our times. Afghanistan challenges our temperament for violent conflict in ways men like Churchill and Truman, for all their wisdom, could not have foreseen.

There are many arguments against our involvement in Afghanistan—that we entered the conflict in a fever of righteous pique; that we don’t have any clear goals there; that Pakistan is the more important focus; that the country is as unstable now as it was when the Soviets tried to conquer it; that any resultant increase in national security is not worth the cost. These points are all valid and worthy of consideration, and yet all but this last have little bearing on the reality of the day: we are there.

We are there, and like it or not, we have to do something.

We could, of course, withdraw immediately. This sounds like a fine idea to skeptics on the left, many of whom seem not so much pacifist as exhausted. These are the same Democrats, it is important to remember, who happily trumpeted Obama’s commitment to escalating the “real war” in Afghanistan in exchange for withdrawal from Iraq during the 2008 campaign. Fickleness is a friend to all politics.

But unless we are heartless we must ask: withdrawal at what cost? Aside from a small buffer from the remaining external forces (who would see it as betrayal), Afghanistan would almost certainly be plunged into a state of anarchy and bloodshed. Our enemies in the region (al Qaeda, the Taliban) would be empowered. The American military would lose faith in their commander-in-chief, who would have expressly contradicted the recommendations of his top military advisors, not to mention broken a clear campaign promise. The political fallout for President Obama would be sharp; “surrender” would once again be the most popular word on Fox News. And who knows what would happen in Pakistan? Would it respond with a newfound responsibility for the region, or with more of the same corrupt apathy? Would the regime even survive? There is a reason it has been called the “Af-Pak” strategy. What begins in Afghanistan surely does not end there.

Of course we know, based on last week’s decisions, that immediate withdrawal is not a tolerable option for our Commander-in-Chief. Nor should it strike us as a reasonable one. What then?

We could stay forever. The neoconservative right demands empire: how else can we maintain democracy and security in one of the most unstable, corrupt places on the planet? Not until there is a functioning democracy, a competent army, a vanquished Taliban and nary a trace of opium would Bill Kristol and his cynical ilk be happy—nor even then, for they don’t actually care about Afghanistan. They want permanent war.  They want, if we are a bit conspiracy-minded, a reason to keep producing tanks and Kevlar and paying for “private security forces.”  They want a satellite in the Muslim world from which to police the region, sovereignty be damned. And they want, most ludicrous of all, for this permanent American presence to somehow engender good feelings and blot out Islamic terrorism for good. Hearts and minds are one side of COIN [PDF], after all.

So the neoconservative solution doesn’t seem reasonable either. Where does that leave us?

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A Sobering Statistic in Afghanistan

I wrote in my intro post that I wished to understand the situation in Afghanistan better. Here’s a start, and it’s a stark one.

According to the AP, international troops and Afghan security forces outnumber Taliban insurgents 12-1. Twelve to one!

So why aren’t we winning?