Yesterday's sudden news that the Obama administration is replacing the current commander in Afghanistan, the more conventionally trained Gen. David McKiernan, with the special forces and counterinsugrency focused Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, provides some serious insight into the president's approach to this conflict and his relationship with the DoD and the military in general. The somewhat unprecedented switch certainly reflects a sense of anxiety about the mission in Afghanistan and willingness to make something of an abrupt shift to get the wheels rolling again there; Spencer notes that counterinsurgents respect McChrystal and offers some insight into how he got his post and what he has planned.
But what impresses most are the continuing dividends of keeping Defense Secretary Robert Gates in his post for the new administration. Gates has shown a serious willingness to shift the ball on policy, whether realigning DoD budget priorities, supporting the administration's withdrawal plan, or now taking steps to demand accountability from senior military leadership (as he has in the past with other mistakes).
It seems that the decision to replace McKiernan came from Gates, but you can certainly imagine an alternate scenario where a different SecDefense wouldn't have come up with the idea or, even having concerns about the commander in Afghanistan, wouldn't have felt the decision politically tenable. One quote that has always stuck with me about our recent conflict is Lt. Col Paul Yingling's complaint that "as matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war." Those days may be coming to an end.
But the arrival of a new and possibly better-suited commander changes nothing about the deep intractability of the Afghanistan conflict; only time will tell if the new approach he brings with him will be effective. There's also the issue of his involvement with the misinformation surrounding the death of Pat Tillman, although my impression is that he caught that problem for being at the top of the wrong chain of command, and more worryingly, his past connections to torture. Hopefully someone has made it clear to him that those practices aren't acceptible anymore.
-- Tim Fernholz
