I had something written up about McCrystal’s “comments”, but decided to leave a link to this:
“McChrystal Goes Rogue… Again!”
Which approximates what I wrote, but also that I truly believe that the General has reached the point of where he thinks that the war is going to be lost because of not only the lack of support and self defeating ROE from Obama and his handlers, but mainly from the rest of our government, especially our inept State Dept and the disappointing facts that several of NATO have stated that that they are going to abandon Afghanistan soon.
He knows that the chances of any kind of win, went out the window or at least severely damaged when our State Dept lackey criticized and marginalized the President of Afghanistan and THEN we had to have three levels of brass to get approval for air or arty. The mistaken notion pushed by the media is that the General is the one who is behind this reduction of air and arty and restricted ROE. Not exactly true. His aim was to reduce civilian deaths but NOT by reducing the protection and support of our troops to the reduction of the use of air and arty to the level it has been. That has been pushed by the Afgan Government and our State Dept. as well as NATO brass.
Yon foretold and tells of this and I have my sources too. There is quite a lot of discussion of this out of the sight of media or even on the net.
But this is the problem with the military and always has been. The implementation by the lower brass to an order given from the top. I saw this repeatedly in my little war to where we even had to have unit identification of the enemy. Not just that they were enemy forces but who the hell they were.
Stupid? Well, not near the most stupid I could tell you of.
As far as the rest of my opinion on Afghanistan, I left my comment HERE on this earlier Belmont Club post, before the ROE changes, for anyone interested. Just beware it is a little longish…kinda like this little war in a far off place where our Warriors are enduring hardship, stupid leadership, and being told to not fight but just to make friends and not get into any situations where there might be contact with the enemy around civilians.
Does that sound familiar? If you were in VN it will be very familiar. We won that fight only to have our politicians lose it for us and millions of innocent civilians.
Is it about to happen again?
Papa Ray
P.S. For what it is worth the Afghan government (what little and corrupt that it is) is against Obama sacking the General. Consider that and take it for what ever you think it is worth.
