McChrystal: More Forces or Mission Failure

by CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)

In today’s Washington Post in what has got to be one of the most brazen examples of American high-level military cluelessness since the Viet Nam era, it is reported that General McChrystal in a memo to Secretary of Defense Gates is asking for more troops in Afganistan now.  He says our mission will fail without more troops.  The article is here.  Here is a quote from the article:

“But he repeatedly warns that without more forces and the rapid implementation of a genuine counterinsurgency strategy, defeat is likely. McChrystal describes an Afghan government riddled with corruption and an international force undermined by tactics that alienate civilians.”

Yeah, now there is something we all want to support! Will somebody on his staff pinch this guy and wake him up to the political realities of waging an unwanted war with borrowed money and your neighbor’s kids?  This guy is living in dreamland.  That war is over but for the shouting.  Bring them home.  Now.

This is one more example of how our military, our “professional” military is now so completely unconnected to reality this can happen without anyone even blinking anymore.

Military paradigms are so unreal now that the general that we sent over there to give a realistic assessment of the situation is asking for more troops!  This would be to wage a war that has no clearly stated mission, no support of any magnitude from the American people and no history of success in the first place.

And I would like to bet you that this guy was at the top of his class at West Point.  No kidding.

What in the hell are American flag officers devolving into?  Can you imagine Eisenhower or Bradley or Patton or MacArthur or Mark Clark looking at this situation and saying to the Secretary of War “I need more troops!”.  No!  They would say, “what I need is more trucks…to get these soldiers out of here.”

This “war” is unwinnable.  It is American involvement in an ongoing Muslim War of the Reformation that will go on for hundreds of years involving Shia and Sunni insurgents jockeying for a position to out kill each other.  We are a simple sideshow to this slaughter.

We have injected ourselves into a religious war because we felt the need for revenge when those Islamist nutjobs sought to widen the war of intolerance by including us in attacks.

They based their hatred on our support for the nationhood of Israel.  This is a religious war.  That means by definition it has no political basis.

It is a blood war, a war of vendetta, a war of one tribal vision of G*d against another tribal vision of G*d. It is by definition unwinnable because it is supposed to be unwinnable until G*d intervenes.  That is what these nuts are waiting to see happen…their vision of G*d to intervene and kill the Great Satan (that would be us).

And now, we have a top general with impeccable credentials asking for more troops to get us even more deeply involved in this theocratic insanity fueled by a Muslim Reformation that is now taking place throughout the world.

To make matters worse, we have a strong minority of extreme fundamentalist Christians in the USA who actually want us involved in this ongoing and never-ending mess because they believe that the violence caused in the Middle East will bring the Second Coming of Jesus Christ into reality.  That is some religion, eh?

This is no joke. These are the major pro-war groups involved in this insanity. You just cannot make this stuff up!

We are sacrificing American and NATO soldiers every day, not to mention killing Afghan sheepherders and shop keepers by the dozens because Sunni and Shia Muslims want revenge for killings that go back centuries and they want to protect the Afghan drug turfs they own while at the same time American fundamentalists want to use this Muslim hatred between religious groups to bring about the Second Coming.  If I were Jesus I would just keep ongoing.  What deity would want to stop his godliness to be part of this?

What kind of goofiness can possibly grow out of continuing this debacle?  This makes Saturday morning cartoons look downright adult and reality-based!  This is totally nuts.

Bring those young Americans home. We do not want or need to be involved in this insanity any longer.