Word: mcchrystal
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...hunkering down for a fight, many more, along with thousands of residents, have fled Marja until the dust settles. That should limit civilian casualties and, they hope, lure some lukewarm Taliban over to the government side. "We're not interested in how many Taliban we kill," Army General Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S., commander in Afghanistan, said Thursday. "We'd much rather have them see the inevitability that things are changing and just accept that." (See pictures of the new U.S. offensive in Afghanistan...
After his most recent trip to Islamabad, I asked Gates how he could consider Pakistani officials who support Haqqani's network as allies. "It's frustrating," he said, then went quiet. I suggested that his silence said a lot. (See pictures of Gen. Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan...
...symbolism of Gates employing the very machines left behind by the Soviets is more unsettling than ironic. Before finally throwing his support behind McChrystal's push for a troop surge late last year, Gates repeatedly warned that even the Soviets could not win with 110,000 troops in Afghanistan. Gates should know, since he was one of the reasons the Soviets failed. As deputy director of intelligence at the CIA in the 1980s, he signed off on the decision to ramp up U.S. aid to the mujahedin, including the supply of Stinger antiaircraft missiles. Gates plotted with President Mohammed...
...though everyone talks about bringing soft power and a civilian surge to Afghanistan, in reality there are very few civilians to surge with. From the moment Gates put McChrystal in charge of the war, the military usurped control of the Afghanistan debate; ambassador Richard Holbrooke, who reports to Clinton as her special envoy to the region, was relegated to the sidelines...
Upon arriving in Kabul last spring, McChrystal flooded the Afghan countryside with counterinsurgency experts who came up with dire assessments and stated a need for more troops. Even Gates seemed blindsided by his own general. Gates had been public about avoiding a big American footprint in the Pashtun countryside. But after the McChrystal team's findings began leaking, Gates shifted course. To me, he said, "Once McChrystal said, 'This is what I need,' then I was there. And my goal was, how do we get Stan McChrystal as much of what he's asked for as quickly as possible...