Afghanistan: Obama Fires a General

Two comments on the dismissal of the top Army general in Afghanistan. First, as I have said before, if a general is not doing a good job, he should be replaced. Lincoln did it. Bush should have done it. If President Obama and Defense Secretary Gates think General David McKiernan has not been doing a good job, or if they think there are better people available, then they were right to replace him. I am glad to see a president do some of this.

Second, most of the stories have said that General David Petraeus agreed with the move. But see "The Strategic Debate Over Afghanistan" at Stratfor. I don’t know who is right here, but I note the new guy, General Stanley McChrystal, came out of the Special Forces side of the Army. (General McKiernan was "old Army," tanks, conventional forces, etc., which makes you wonder why he was appointed to Afghanistan in the first place.) General Petraeus, on the other hand, emphasized a counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq, with population security the key thing. That is different than what Special Forces do.

So what approach are we going to take in Afghanistan? Are we going to emphasize Special Forces targeting enemy leaders and high value targets? Or are we going to adopt a counterinsurgency strategy more like what General Petraeus implemented in Iraq (modified, of course, for the fact Afghanistan is not Iraq). Obviously, you can use both of them together. We did that in Iraq. The question is which one are we going to emphasize more. We don’t know yet, though I tend to think the latter, i.e., a modified counterinsurgency focus, with an emphasis on population security, would probably do better than the former, i.e., an emphasis on Special Forces operations.