WHICH SIDE WAS MCCHRYSTAL ON IN AFGHANISTAN?

We’re losing in Afghanistan.  There are four reasons why.  Two are self-inflicted wounds which easily can be corrected.  But the two more important reasons are much harder to fix.

The lesser self inflicted wound are rules of engagement so restrictive they make it difficult for American troops to defend themselves.  To win the hearts and minds of people, reasonable measures must be taken to hold down civilian casualties. 

But when the ROE are so restrictive they permit insurgents to mingle freely among (and thus to intimidate) civilians, and make Americans seem weak and ineffectual, they do more harm than good.  Gen. David Petraeus, who is replacing Gen. Stanley McChrystal as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is reviewing them. 

The worse self-inflicted wound is the deadline President Barack Obama set for July 2011 to begin withdrawing U.S. troops.  This is militarily insane, because it encourages our enemies to wait us out, and discourages friendlies from cooperating with us, for fear of reprisals after we leave.  If Gen. Petraeus cannot get the president to publicly and firmly back off of this, the mission is doomed.

If we stop wounding ourselves, prospects for victory will improve.  But they’ll still be dim if Hamid Karzai remains president of Afghanistan.  Insurgencies are defeated only when a significant proportion of the population supports the government.  This is emphatically not true in Afghanistan today.

"Of 121 ‘key’ districts (out of 365 districts in the country) the Pentagon assessed only 35 ‘favorably,’ at the ‘occasional threats’ level or better," noted Ann Marlowe of the Hudson Institute, who has embedded six times with U.S. troops.

The Afghan army and police have not improved, despite the expenditure upon them of nearly as much as Israel spends on its armed forces.

This is not because Afghans lack martial qualities, noted New York Times columnist Tom Friedman.

"If there is one thing that Afghan males should not need to be trained to do, it’s to engage in warfare," Mr. Friedman wrote.  "That may be the only thing they all know how to do after 30 years of civil war."

Afghans will fight for their tribe, their families, their religion, for loot, and for fun.  But few will fight for a concept of a central government, something Afghans have had only when it was imposed upon them from without.  Fewer still will fight for a central government headed by Hamid Karzai.

"We are supporting a criminal state in Kabul that is likely involved with the insurgency itself," Ms. Marlowe said.  "There is almost nothing to distinguish the Taliban from the Karzai mafias, whose tentacles reach down to the most obscure rural districts.  American commanders will tell you of governors, police chiefs, district governors and district police chiefs so corrupt, abusive and vicious that the Taliban are a desirable alternative."

Gen. McChrystal turned a blind eye to the crime syndicate run by President Karzai’s brother, Ahmad, which the London Times said nets a billion dollars a year from the Coalition involvement in Afghanistan.

"Under McChrystal, (counterinsurgency) seemed to amount to hoping that (Ahmad Karzai) would calm Kandahar for us — even if, as I detailed in a recent expose, he also sold the very explosives that are used to kill American soldiers," Ms. Marlowe wrote in the New York Post Friday (6/25).

The mission in Afghanistan is doomed unless Ahmad Karzai is arrested; his crime syndicate broken up, and Hamid Karzai — whose re-election was widely believed to be the product of fraud — is driven from office.

The other elephant in the room our policymakers have chosen to ignore is Pakistan.

Matt Waldman spent nearly three years in Afghanistan with the aid group Oxfam International.  Earlier this month Harvard University published a paper he wrote based on interviews with current and former Taliban leaders.

According to them, Pakistan‘s ISI (Inter-Service Intelligence Agency) "orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the movement," Mr. Waldman said.  "It gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions and supplies."

The mission is doomed unless we can get Pakistan to stop bankrolling our enemies.

"McChrystal was an enabler of the two-faced Pakistanis, who both clamor for more American aid, yet funnel support to the Afghan insurgency," Ms. Marlowe said.  "Gen. David Petraeus must make it clear to Pakistan that our allies have to act like allies."

Add it up.  McChrystal’s ROE’s that got his soldiers killed, his support of Karzai corruption, and his enabling of the ISI.  Which side was he on?

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.