Ill-Considered Trash Talk McChrystal’s Idea of Winning Hearts and Minds

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Politico reports that Stanley McChrystal saw today’s big Rolling Stone article before it was published but didn’t object to anything in it (and the Hill reports there was even more devastating trash talk that was off the record).

Rolling Stone’s executive editor on Tuesday said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal did not raise any objections to a new article that repeatedly quotes him criticizing the administration.

Eric Bates, the magazine’s editor, said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that McChrystal saw the piece prior to its publication as part of Rolling Stone’s standard fact-checking process – and that the general did not object to or dispute any of the reporting.

Asked if McChrystal pushed back on the story, Bates responded: “No, absolutely not.

Now, given the use of the pronoun “they” in the follow-on quotes, I’m assuming by “McChrystal” Bates means “McChrystal’s office,” which may well mean only that press aide that McChrystal already fired reviewed the article.

Nevertheless, this article was not–should not have been–a surprise. McChrystal’s team was at least okay with all this trash talk being published, if not intended for it to be published.

So take a step back and think about what that means for McChrystal (and should mean for the question of whether or not he gets fired for this). Stanley McChrystal, the guy in charge of winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan, okayed this article, presumably intending it to win hearts and minds in the US.

And McChrystal presumably knows US culture better than he knows Afghanistan culture.

This article is McChrystal’s idea of winning hearts and minds.

Argue what you will about whether McChrystal’s insubordination requires his firing. Argue what you will about his unique qualifications for the job.

But if this is McChrystal’s idea of how to win hearts and minds then we will never achieve success in Afghanistan so long as he’s in charge.

(Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Update: Rolling Stone tempers that somewhat. Though note the Hill piece and CNN pieces linked include similar, though weaker, claims.

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Joe Biden, Another Big Fucking I Told You So

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The Toobz are a-tizzy this morning with a Rolling Stone article revealing that Stanley McChrystal said mean things about Joe Biden–both publicly and behind his back.

Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as “shortsighted,” saying it would lead to a state of “Chaos-istan.” The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile.

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

But the article is far more subtle than the tizzy lets on. And the tizzy ignores the real moral of the story, revealed after five pages of eye-popping revelations. McChrystal’s counter-insurgency plan is failing. It’s failing not because some of his aides said mean things about Biden, and not because he’s got a long-running spat with Karl Eikenberry, our Ambassador to Afghanistan. It’s failing because the Special Ops guys, whom McChrystal led killing bunches of people in Iraq, are not hard-wired to win hearts and minds. It’s failing because both the tools at McChrystal’s disposal (a bunch of JSOC guys) and the conditions on the ground mean counterterrorism, not counterinsurgency, is the best approach: precisely what Biden argued during the Afghan policy review.

When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated last fall. “This looks like CT-plus!” he said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.

One of the real revelations of this story–one which actually takes up about 1/5 of the article and which is based not on aides revealing embarrassing stories but on watching grunts interact with the General they are often depicted as idolizing–is that they no longer buy that McChrystal can bridge the seemingly (and in fact) irreconcilable forces of the Afghan war; his bravado and mystique is not enough to persuade the grunts implementing his plan to buy into using less lethal force with the hearts and minds they’re supposed to be winning.

“I ask you what’s going on in your world, and I think it’s important for you all to understand the big picture as well,” McChrystal begins. “How’s the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you’re losing?” McChrystal says.

“Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir,” says Hicks.

McChrystal nods. “Strength is leading when you just don’t want to lead,” he tells the men. “You’re leading by example. That’s what we do. Particularly when it’s really, really hard, and it hurts inside.” Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counterinsurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard.

[snip]

“This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks,” McChrystal tries to joke. “But it doesn’t get the same reception from infantry companies.”

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In Bitchy Outburst, Risen Confirms Lithium Story Timed to Afghan Setbacks

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Frankly, I’m willing to cut James Risen some slack. So much so that when Monday’s !Afghanistan is Rich! story appeared, I didn’t post my first instincts: that the story felt more like a planted David Sanger or William Broad story (or, for old time’s sake, Judy) than a James Risen story.

But in response to well-deserved skepticism about the story, Risen went on a bit of a rant–complete with bloggers in their pajamas. And while his rant refutes the suggestion that this was entirely planted (Milt Bearden had told him about the mineral finds some time ago), it absolutely confirms one of the concerns raised about the piece: that its timing had everything to do with recent setbacks in Afghanistan and, probably, Petraeus’ testimony before Congress.

“Several months ago, Milt started telling me about what they were finding,” Risen said. “At the beginning of the year, I said I wanted to do a story on it.” At first both Bearden and [Paul Brinkley, the guy at DOD tasked with rebuilding the Afghan economy] resisted, Risen said, but he eventually wore them down. “Milt convinced Brinkley to talk to me,” he said, “and Brinkley convinced other Pentagon officials to go on the record. I think Milt realized that things were going so badly in Afghanistan that people would be willing to talk about this.” In other words, according to Risen, he wasn’t handed the story in a calculated leak. Calls and e-mails to Brinkley and to Eric Clark, a Pentagon public relations contractor who works with him, were not immediately returned. [my emphasis]

According to Risen’s own account, he had been discussing this story since at least the beginning of the year. He never published a story using these sources off the record, nor did he use the material in the public record to point to these riches.

But on the eve of Petraeus’ testimony, the people he had been talking to did decide it made a good time to go on the record.

Oh, and Risen? If you read this, I’m half-dressed in prep to go cover the Marriage Equality trial. You see, calling out government spin is just what we bloggers do for breakfast. And even if I were wearing my pajamas, I’m not sure I’d be physically able to “jerk off” in them.

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Feed the Generals Catfood, Too

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I had a bit of fun with Michael O’Hanlon on Tuesday. At the America’s Future Now conference, he was pitted against Juan Cole in a debate over the future of our Afghan war. I took the first question to note that we weren’t just facing a choice between escalating in Afghanistan (O’Hanlon’s position) or maintaining the status quo (Cole’s position). We also faced a choice between escalating in Afghanistan and doing something about our 10% unemployment rate.

O’Hanlon responded by explaining how much longer he thought the surge of troops needed to remain in Afghanistan.

To his credit, when I noted that by defunding schools, we’re creating a much bigger national security problem than Afghanistan, he said we shouldn’t have to choose (while admitting that politics in DC meant we would have to do so).

Finally, someone in DC–Barney Frank–is making a similar argument in concrete form.

A panel commissioned by Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) is recommending nearly $1 trillion in cuts to the Pentagon’s budget during the next 10 years.

The Sustainable Defense Task Force, a commission of scholars from a broad ideological spectrum appointed by Frank, the House Financial Services Committee chairman, laid out actions the government could take that could save as much as $960 billion between 2011 and 2020.

[snip]

The acceptance of the recommendations would depend on a “philosophical change” and a “redefinition of the strategy,” Frank said at press conference on Capitol Hill.

He said the creation of the deficit reduction commission offers the best opportunity for the reduction recommendations. Frank wants to convince his colleagues to write to the deficit reduction commission and warn that they would not approve any of the plans suggested by the commission unless reduction of military spending is included.

Now, Frank’s committee’s recommendations are actually not the defense equivalent of cat food. They involve cutting things like the F35 we have no use as anything but a jobs program.

But it’s something we may well have to sell as a national security issue. The effects of the recession (and a decade of Norquist-inspired bathtub shrinking) really are forcing us to cut education. That’s something the federal government could prevent. So it’s high time we invested in our base-level national competency before yet another set of military toys.

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The Illegal War on Latin American (!) Terrorism

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I linked to this Jeremy Scahill post already, but I wanted to point out a few things about Scahill’s elaboration on the WaPo’s covert ops story of the other day.

First, Scahill provides a list of locations where Obama’s expanded special operations war has deployed:

The Nation has learned from well-placed special operations sources that among the countries where elite special forces teams working for the Joint Special Operations Command have been deployed under the Obama administration are: Iran, Georgia, Ukraine, Bolivia, Paraguay, Ecuador, Peru, Yemen, Pakistan (including in Balochistan) and the Philippines. These teams have also at times deployed in Turkey, Belgium, France and Spain. JSOC has also supported US Drug Enforcement Agency operations in Colombia and Mexico. The frontline for these forces at the moment, sources say, are Yemen and Somalia. “In both those places, there are ongoing unilateral actions,” said a special operations source. “JSOC does a lot in Pakistan too.”

I’m not sure about you, but I, for one, have never heard of “Al Qaeda in Ecuador” or “Al Qaeda in Belgium.” While some of these deployments likely do have ties to fighters just one step removed from al Qaeda (later in the article, Scahill describes JSOC partnering with Georgia to pursue Chechens), others might be more likely to have ties to terrorist financing (Belgium) or illicit trade (including drugs) that might fund terrorism. Or hell, maybe just oil and gas, since they’re pretty criminal and we’re addicted, so it’s practically the same thing.

Which brings me back to the UN report on targeted killings. When describing the target of these covert ops, the WaPo story said the ops are directed “against al Qaeda and other radical organizations.” As I highlighted from the WaPo story, John Bellinger believes many of those targeted have nothing to do with 9/11.

Many of those currently being targeted, Bellinger said, “particularly in places outside Afghanistan,” had nothing to do with the 2001 attacks.

Which is a concern the UN report expresses: that the US has declared itself to be in a non-international armed conflict that is sufficiently vaguely defined as to include many people whose targeting would be illegal under international humanitarian law.

53. Taken cumulatively, these factors make it problematic for the US to show that – outside the context of the armed conflicts in Afghanistan or Iraq – it is in a transnational non-international armed conflict against “al Qaeda, the Taliban, and other associated forces”107 without further explanation of how those entities constitute a “party” under the IHL of non-international armed conflict, and whether and how any violence by any such group rises to the level necessary for an armed conflict to exist.

[snip]

55. With respect to the existence of a non-state group as a “party”, al-Qaeda and other alleged “associated” groups are often only loosely linked, if at all. Sometimes they appear to be not even groups, but a few individuals who take “inspiration” from al Qaeda. The idea that, instead, they are part of continuing hostilities that spread to new territories as new alliances form or are claimed may be superficially appealing but such “associates’ cannot constitute a “party” as required by IHL – although they can be criminals, if their conduct violates US law, or the law of the State in which they are located.

56. To ignore these minimum requirements, as well as the object and purpose of IHL, would be to undermine IHL safeguards against the use of violence against groups that are not the equivalent of an organized armed group capable of being a party to a conflict – whether because it lacks organization, the ability to engage in armed attacks, or because it does not have a connection or belligerent nexus to actual hostilities. It is also salutary to recognize that whatever rules the US seeks to invoke or apply to al Qaeda and any “affiliates” could be invoked by other States to apply to other non-state armed groups. To expand the notion of non-international armed conflict to groups that are essentially drug cartels, criminal gangs or other groups that should be dealt with under the law enforcement framework would be to do deep damage to the IHL and human rights frameworks. [my emphasis]

The UN reports that the US has admitted to using drones to take out Afghan drug lords; Scahill notes we’ve used these covert teams to target drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia. And the inclusion of so many Latin American countries on Scahill’s list suggests further possible drug ties (while the presence of Georgia and Ukraine on Scahill’s list suggest the possibility of organized crime targets).

In other words, precisely the concern the UN report lays out may be reflected in Scahill’s list.

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Liz “BabyDick” Cheney: Obama Not Bloodthirsty Enough

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BabyDick has struck again, this time in criticizing Obama’s response to the Israeli attack on a humanitarian flotilla–as well as the killing of an American citizen. Liz Cheney is basically arguing Obama must stand with Israel even when it kills American citizens or it stands with the “Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis.”

Yesterday, President Obama said the Israeli action to stop the flotilla bound for the Gaza Strip was “tragic.” What is truly tragic is that President Obama is perpetuating Israel’s enemies’ version of events. The Israeli government has imposed a blockade around Gaza because Hamas remains committed to Israel’s destruction…

President Obama is contributing to the isolation of Israel, and sending a clear signal to the Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis that their methods for ostracizing Israel will succeed, and will be met by no resistance from America.

There is no middle ground here. Either the United States stands with the people of Israel in the war against radical Islamic terrorism or we are providing encouragement to Israel’s enemies — and our own. Keep America Safe calls on President Obama to reverse his present course and support the state of Israel immediately and unequivocally.

The “Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis”? That doesn’t even make sense!! We had this woman in a significant Middle Eastern policy role for years?!?!

So now PapaDick’s evil spawn demands that the President of this country ignore the illegal killing of an American in service to her small-minded McCarthyite attacks?

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The US Is Defending Not Just Its Closest Ally in Israeli Raid, but Also Approach to War

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I think there’s more to America’s defense of Israel’s attack on the Free Gaza flotilla than simply more blind support for Israel. By defending Israel’s attack, members of the US elite are also defending a problematic legal stance–one that the US has adopted in its own counterterrorist efforts.

Let’s start with this premise: the only way Israel’s attack on the flotilla was legal under international law was if it can argue that it is at war with Gaza–which also means that the only way the attack was legal was if Israel treats Gaza as a state. A number of people have made this observation, but for our purposes Craig Murray’s explanation will suffice.

Every comments thread on every internet site on the world which has discussed the Israeli naval murders, has been inundated by organised ZIonist commenters stating that the Israeli action was legal under the San Remo Manual of International Law Applicable to Armed Conflicts at Sea.

They ignore those parts of San Remo that specifically state that it is illegal to enforce a general blockade on an entire population. But even apart from that, San Remo simply does not apply.

The manual relates specifically to legal practice in time of war. With whom is Israel at war?

There is no war.

Israeli apologists have gone on to say they are in a state of armed conflict with Gaza.

Really? In that case, why do we continually hear Israeli complaints about rockets fired from Gaza into Israel? If it is the formal Israeli position that it is in a state of armed conflict with Gaza, then Gaza has every right to attack Israel with rockets.

But in fact, plainly to the whole world, the nature and frequency of Israeli complaints about rocket attacks gives evidence that Israel does not in fact believe that a situation of armed conflict exists.

Secondly, if Israel wishes to claim it is in a state of armed conflict with Gaza, then it must treat all of its Gazan prisoners as prisoners of war entitled to the protections of the Geneva Convention. If you are in a formal state of armed conflict, you cannot categorise your opponents as terrorists.

But again, it is plain for the world to see from its treatment and description of Gazan prisoners that it does not consider itself to be in a formal position of armed conflict.

Israel is seeking to pick and choose which bits of law applicable to armed conflict it applies, by accepting or not accepting it is in armed conflcit depending on the expediency of the moment.

This is the same principle that says we can’t simultaneously argue CIA can target Predator drones at people in countries we’re not at war with, while at the same time insisting that when Omar Khadr allegedly threw a grenade during hostilities it was illegal.

Yet as last week’s UN report on targeted killings makes clear, both Israel and the US (and some other countries) have tried to make similar claims as they expand the application of targeted killings, including the use of Predator drones.  The report traces the use and dubious legality of targeted killings by Israel against Palestinians to the 1990s and by Russia against Chechnyans to 1999. It’s in that tradition that our own program of targeted killing started shortly after 9/11.

The report goes on to explain why both the US and Israel might be inclined to treat their actions against terrorists as an armed conflict.

47. On the other hand, both the US and Israel have invoked the existence of an armed conflict against alleged terrorists (“non-state armed groups”).95 The appeal is obvious: the [international humanitarian law] applicable in armed conflict arguably has more permissive rules for killing than does human rights law or a State’s domestic law, and generally provides immunity to State armed forces.96 Because the law of armed conflict has fewer due process safeguards, States also see a benefit to avoiding compliance with the more onerous requirements for capture, arrest, detention or extradition of an alleged terrorist in another State. IHL is not, in fact, more permissive than human rights law because of the strict IHL requirement that lethal force be necessary. But labeling a situation as an armed conflict might also serve to expand executive power both as a matter of domestic law and in terms of public support.

48. Although the appeal of an armed conflict paradigm to address terrorism is obvious, so too is the significant potential for abuse. Internal unrest as a result of insurgency or other violence by non-state armed groups, and even terrorism, are common in many parts of the world. If States unilaterally extend the law of armed conflict to situations that are essentially matters of law enforcement that must, under international law, be dealt with under the framework of human rights, they are not only effectively declaring war against a particular group, but eviscerating key and necessary distinctions between international law frameworks that restricts States’ ability to kill arbitrarily. [my emphasis]

Israel is currently asserting its commando team is immune from laws about murder and piracy. And the reference to the appeal of an armed conflict as a rationale to expand executive power really sums up the last nine years of American history.

Where the US and Israeli preference to treat counterterrorism as armed conflict really goes astray of the law is in the definition of whom they may target.

58. In international armed conflict, combatants may be targeted at any time and any place (subject to the other requirements of IHL).108 Under the IHL applicable to noninternational armed conflict, the rules are less clear. In non-international armed conflict, there is no such thing as a “combatant.”109 Instead – as in international armed conflict – States are permitted to directly attack only civilians who “directly participate in hostilities” (DPH).110 Because there is no commonly accepted definition of DPH, it has been left open to States’ own interpretation – which States have preferred not to make public – to determine what constitutes DPH.

59. There are three key controversies over DPH. First, there is dispute over the kind of conduct that constitutes “direct participation” and makes an individual subject to attack. Second, there is disagreement over the extent to which “membership” in an organized armed group may be used as a factor in determining whether a person is directly participating in hostilities. Third, there is controversy over how long direct participation lasts.

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Ed Koch Calls Jeremy Scahill a Terrorist Supporter for Defending Children

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Onscreen, Ed Koch’s stupidest statement in this interview was when he responded to Jeremy Scahill’s question about how a goat or a horse or a children’s toy would be used as rocket to hit Israel by saying only, “that’s nonsense.” Or maybe when Koch said, in response to Scahill’s question whether Hamas’ refusal to recognize Israel justified strangling children, “Don’t tell me children!”

But his most troubling comment came during the commercial break–apparently Koch was too chicken to say it publicly.

During the break on MSNBC, Ed Koch called me a “terrorist supporter” I said, “Say it on the air.”

Update: Here’s Scahill’s post on the exchange, including a link to the list of items prohibited by the blockade, including:

  • sage
  • cardamom
  • cumin
  • coriander
  • ginger
  • nutmeg
  • chocolate
  • seeds and nuts
  • fishing rods
  • various fishing nets
  • fabric (for clothing)
  • sewing machines and spare parts
  • size A4 paper
  • writing implements
  • notebooks
  • razors
  • toys
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The Impending Intelligence Games

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After the Israelis attacked a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid the other night, and particularly after the US quietly stated it would wait to learn all the details of the attack, I knew the US and Israel would claim to have had intelligence about the flotilla that would somehow “justify” violations of international law.

Sure enough, Israel told other countries that members of Hezbollah were on the flotilla.

Israeli officials are privately telling their international counterparts that they had intelligence that Hezbollah operatives were hidden among the crew and passengers of several ships. The initial plan was to board all the ships, separate the alleged terrorists, bring the flotilla to Ashdod, and then deal separately with the Gaza activists.  But the intelligence was apparently non-specific, the commandos were trigger-happy and tense (unusually so for the Israelis) and they did not anticipate that passengers and crew on one of the ships would turn against them. A cascade of failures, unclear rules of engagement and a climate of tension –> a tragedy. [emphasis Marc Ambinder’s]

And, as Max Blumenthal reports, they even tried to make–then backed off of–a claim that some flotilla participants were members of al Qaeda.

In a special meeting of the Security Cabinet it was disclosed that a group of 40 people on board the Mavi Mamara with no identification papers belong to Al Qaeda. The terrorists were equipped with bullet proof vests, night-vision goggles, and weapons.

Hey, Israel?!? You should check for those members of Hezbollah-I-mean-al-Qaeda inside those aluminum tubes over there. Right. Right over there, next to that fancy letter from Niger.

Mind you, I have absolutely zero doubt that the US, if not Israel itself, has detailed intelligence on the planning and make-up of the participants in the flotilla. The flotilla has been planned very publicly for months, flotilla members openly challenged Israel and its blockade of Gaza, and presumably planners used email and phones to plan the trip. The US government would require no warrant to wiretap all but the few American participants in the flotilla. Plus, the IDF has openly admitted it sabotaged five of the six ships in the flotilla (though I wonder whether they did this with some kind of electromagnetic pulse).

During his briefing on the operation to the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Colonel Itzik Turgeman hinted that the IDF had sabotaged the engines of the other five ships, saying that “they took care of them.”

But that’s why the described vagueness of the intelligence, the release of very limited, edited videos by Israel, and the immediate preference on the part of both the US and Israel for an Israeli-led, um, “investigation” stinks so much. If the evidence really justified killing civilians, Israel would state as much and show the proof it assuredly does have. But thus far, at least, rather than show proof, they’re making unsubstantiated and changing claims.

Maybe they have proof, but they’re not showing it.

Then again, if I were a Turkish activist hoping to incite Israel into doing something really stupid and I had reason to assume I was being wiretapped, I might plant a vague suggestion Israel (and the US, with its trigger-happy weak intelligence analysis) might overreact to.

Which is why I expect we’re in for some months of claims and counterclaims about intelligence relating to this flotilla.

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If Ever You Doubted Water-Boarding KSM Was a Bad Decision…

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George Bush is on the rubber chicken circuit in anticipation of the release of his book, A’m the Deciderer Decision Points. Which means he’s now out in public defending two of his “greatest” decisions, side-by-side:

George Bush admitted yesterday that Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, was waterboarded by the US, and said he would do it again “to save lives”.

“Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” the former president told a business audience in Grand Rapids, Michigan. “I’d do it again to save lives.”

[snip]

In his speech, Bush also defended the decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. He said ousting Saddam Hussein “was the right thing to do and the world is a better place without him”.

Of course, Bush has absolutely zero proof that waterboarding KSM saved lives. Just as he can’t be sure that the world is better without Saddam, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (and almost 5,000 American servicemen and women), with the US deep in debt, and the seeds of the same kind of abusive government–this one with close ties to Iran–in place in Iraq.

But the really telling bit about this news is that it puts the decision to waterboard KSM right there next to the decision to launch a war of choice rather than focus on beating the terrorists who attacked us. That is, it puts Bush’s decision to embrace torture right there next to what many consider one of the biggest foreign policy mistakes in history.

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