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<DIV style="FONT: 10pt arial">----- Original Message -----
<DIV style="BACKGROUND: #e4e4e4; font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A
title=tanstl@aol.com href="mailto:tanstl@aol.com">David Sladky</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>To:</B> <A title=undisclosed-recipients:
href="mailto:undisclosed-recipients:">undisclosed-recipients:</A> </DIV>
<DIV><B>Sent:</B> Friday, June 25, 2010 8:55 AM</DIV>
<DIV><B>Subject:</B> Why was General McChrystal fired</DIV></DIV>
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<H2>Why was General McChrystal fired?</H2>
<H5>25 June 2010</H5><FONT size=2>
<DIV>Reactions within the US establishment to the firing of Gen. Stanley
McChrystal indicate that disparaging remarks by McChrystal and his aides
concerning President Obama and other civilian officials published in a
<I>Rolling Stone </I>article were not the principal cause of his
dismissal.</DIV>
<DIV>Rather, the article brought to a head the deepening crisis arising from the
failure of the US military to suppress the popular resistance in Afghanistan to
Washington’s colonial-style war. Dissatisfaction with McChrystal’s leadership
had been mounting within the Obama administration since the failure of the
offensive in Marjah launched last February. The decision announced earlier this
month to delay for at least three months the assault on Kandahar was widely seen
as an embarrassing setback.</DIV>
<DIV>Despite McChrystal’s reputation as a ruthless practitioner of
counterinsurgency warfare, responsible for the killing of thousands of Iraqis,
the general has more recently been the target of growing criticism that the
effectiveness of the operation in Afghanistan was being undermined by his
excessive concern over civilian casualties.</DIV>
<DIV>That concern has nothing to do with humanitarian considerations. Rather, it
is based on the cold calculation—the <I>Rolling Stone </I>article refers to
McChrystal's "insurgent math"—that for every innocent person killed, ten new
enemies are created.</DIV>
<DIV>The article, written by Michael Hastings, deals relatively briefly with the
remarks of McChrystal and his aides about US civilian officials in Afghanistan.
They are predictably crude, and could hardly have come as a surprise to Obama,
let alone to the Pentagon. They are familiar with the fascistic and debased
character of McChrystal’s entourage. Hastings concisely describes the general’s
staff as "a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots,
political operators and outright maniacs."</DIV>
<DIV>The comments made by McChrystal about Obama, Vice President Joseph Biden
and special envoy Richard Holbrooke have generated the most media attention. But
Hastings devotes far more space relating the complaints of American soldiers
that McChrystal is tying their hands by enforcing rules of engagement which
limit the use of air strikes and mortar fire against potential civilian targets
and restrict the ability of US troops to enter the homes of Afghan
civilians.</DIV>
<DIV>Hastings writes that "McChrystal has issued some of the strictest
directives to avoid civilian casualties that the US military has ever
encountered in a war zone." He continues: "But however strategic they may be,
McChrystal’s new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own
troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater
danger. ‘Bottom line?’ says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years
in Iraq and Afghanistan, ‘I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules
of engagement put soldiers’ lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier
will tell you the same thing.’"</DIV>
<DIV>Describing a meeting near Kandahar between McChrystal and disaffected
troops, Hastings writes: "The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use
lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of
evidence. They want to fight—like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan
before McChrystal."</DIV>
<DIV>Whether this view is really widely held among soldiers is not clear. But it
appears that this argument is gaining support within the Washington
policy-making elite and within the media. Hastings indicates his own
standpoint—and, more broadly, that of many of McChrystal’s establishment
critics—when he declares: "When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on
McChrystal’s side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis
Khan—and he wasn’t hampered by things like human rights, economic development
and press scrutiny."</DIV><I>
<DIV>The New York Times</I> weighed in on Wednesday, before the White House
meeting between Obama and McChrystal at which the general submitted his
resignation, with an article by its Afghan war correspondent, C. J. Chivers,
headlined "Warriors Vexed by Rules For War."</DIV>
<DIV>The article makes the case for the US to "take the gloves off" and
dramatically escalate its assault on the Afghan population. Chivers quotes
unnamed soldiers denouncing McChrystal for limiting the use of air strikes and
artillery, and declares: "As levels of violence in Afghanistan climb, there is a
palpable and building sense of unease among troops surrounding one of the most
confounding questions about how to wage the war: when and how lethal force
should be used."</DIV>
<DIV>He continues: "The rules have shifted risks from Afghan civilians to
Western combatants… Young officers and enlisted soldiers and Marines…speak of
‘being handcuffed…’"</DIV>
<DIV>"No one wants to advocate loosening rules that might see more civilians
killed," he writes. But this is precisely what <I>The New York Times </I>is
demanding.</DIV>
<DIV>In its lead editorial published on Thursday, entitled "Afghanistan After
McChrystal," the <I>Times </I>demands a "serious assessment now of the military
and civilian strategies." It then writes, in chilling language: "<I>Until the
insurgents are genuinely bloodied they will keep insisting on a full restoration
of their repressive power</I>. Reports that some State Department officials are
also advocating a swift deal with the Taliban are worrisome." [Emphasis
added].</DIV>
<DIV>This statement, by the authoritative voice of the liberal Democratic Party
policy-making establishment, provides an insight into the deeper issues involved
in McChrystal’s removal. Apparently, for the <I>Times</I>, the United States has
not pursued with sufficient vigor the work of "seriously bloodying" those in
Afghanistan opposed to foreign occupation during more than eight years of
war.</DIV>
<DIV>Tens of thousands of Afghans have already been killed by US and NATO
forces—nobody knows the full extent of the slaughter since Washington does not
bother to count its victims. Tens of thousands more have been wounded, jailed or
tortured in US prisons.</DIV>
<DIV>This campaign of killing and terror is aimed at drowning in blood an
entirely legitimate struggle by the Afghan people for national liberation
against a colonial occupier. The main problem the US faces is that after eight
years of war and more than three decades of US subversion and provocation,
popular resistance by the Afghan masses against American imperialism is growing.
The answer of the US ruling elite is to murder more Afghans.</DIV>
<DIV>The war in Afghanistan is a crime against humanity, and those who are
perpetuating it are war criminals.</DIV>
<DIV>The struggle to arouse opposition in the working class within the United
States and internationally must be renewed.</DIV>
<DIV>Barry Grey</DIV></FONT>
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