John McCain says he knows how to win wars. Unfortunately, he's yet to do that at any point in his life. So I'm not sure where he gets the idea. But in one of McCain's most recent bouts with pomposity--and in his ongoing delusion of military expertise--he's provided us with two key quotes about how he thinks we should reverse the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. In fact, he wants us to use the Iraq "surge" to win there:
"Senator Obama refuses to acknowledge that we are winning in Iraq . . . That's what's happening in Iraq, and it wasn't a tactic . . . It was a stratagem. And that same strategy will be employed in Afghanistan by this great general."
"Senator Obama calls for more troops, but what he doesn't understand, it's got to be a new strategy, the same strategy that he condemned in Iraq. It's going to have to be employed in Afghanistan."
That was last Friday, during the first presidential debate. And it was yet another example of John McCain stepping up to bloviate on military topics for which he has no frame of reference. So much so, that the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, General David McKiernan, was compelled to respond to the idea on Tuesday:
First of all, please don't think that I'm saying there's no room for tribal engagement in Afghanistan, because I think it's very necessary. But I think it's much more complex environment of tribal linkages, and intertribal complexity than there is in Iraq. It's not as simple as taking the Sunni Awakening and doing the Pashtun Awakening in Afghanistan. It's much more complex than that.
But there are countless other differences between Iraq and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, it's such a poor country, by any set of metrics you can imagine. A country that has very harsh geography. It's very difficult to move around, getting back to our reliance on helicopters. It's a country with very few natural resources, as opposed to the oil revenues that (Iraq) has. There's very little money to be generated in terms of generated in Afghanistan. The literacy rate -- you have a literate society in Iraq, you have a society that has a history of producing civil administrators, technocrats, middle class that are able to run the country in Iraq. You do not have that in Afghanistan. So there's educational challenges, challenges of human capitol that I mentioned earlier.
And then McKiernan drove his point home:
So there are a lot of challenges. What I don't think is needed -- the word that I don't use in Afghanistan is the word "surge." There needs to be a sustained commitment of a variety of military and non-military resources, I believe. That's my advice to winning in Afghanistan. It won't be a short-term solution
But McKiernan didn't stop there. According to Ann Scott Tyson of the Washington Post:
Another facet of the Iraq strategy that McKiernan doubts can be duplicated in Afghanistan is the U.S. military's programs to recruit tribes to oppose insurgents.
And, while not part of the surge strategy itself, this successfully implemented counterinsurgency strategy is what John McCain really means when he says "surge"--even though he's never been able to really distinguish between the two.
So, essentially, McKiernan is implying that when a guy who's never before participated in a counterinsurgency operation says this:
You should probably start looking elsewhere for advice.
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"Add Brandon Friedman's The War I Always Wanted to the ranks of outstanding non-fiction produced by officers from elite combat units in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Always truthful, often excruciatingly so, The War I Always Wanted rises at numerous points to the level of literature."--Steven Pressfield, author of Gates of Fire
"A Time To Lead confirms the rewarding benefits of military service at a time when such service is experiencing considerable strain. It also includes a comprehensive description of America's current national imperatives, which deserve serious consideration."--General Alexander M. Haig, Jr., former Secretary of State
"This is a primer on leadership forged in battle and by decades of experience. . .This isn't just a book; it's a manual for leading people and living a good life."--Barry McCaffrey, General, USA (ret.)
"Whip smart, sassy, with a mouth as foul as a sailor's, 28-year-old Sergeant Kayla Williams. . .tells what it's like to be a female soldier in Iraq."--Booklist
". . .echoes military memoirists from Julius Caesar to Ernie Pyle."--Publishers Weekly
". . .a shocking, on-the-ground view of one military woman's experience in Iraq."--Bookmarks Magazine
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