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McChrystal offers to resign

Report: Gen. McChrystal has submitted resignation; White House denies I wouldn’t say the White House denies, more like the White House disassembles:

CNN is reporting that Time magazine’s Joe Klein told the network that Gen. Stanley McChrystal has submitted his resignation in the wake of fallout from his interview with Rolling Stone.

CNN says it is working to confirm Klein’s report, which is pegged to an unnamed source. CNN partners with Time.

Stay tuned.

Update at 5:25 p.m. ET: White House spokesman Robert Gibbs says it hasn’t happened, according to our colleagues at The Oval, who are also trying to confirm the story.

They offer this perspective: “It’s standard for officials at his level to offer their resignation at times like this,” reminding us that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld tendered his resignation several times during the Bush administration, such as when the Abu Ghraib prison abuse became public. Former President Bush did not accept it until the 2006 midterm elections.

“So we could have a situation in which the resignation is there, and it’s up to Obama to take it or not.”

Dithering at the White House? Of course!

I’ll be in Rick Moran’s podcast tonight at 8PM Eastern/7PM Central; this is the subject of the day.

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The runaway story on The Runaway General

UPDATE
McChrystal offers to resign

The Rolling Stone article, The Runaway General, on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, is certainly THE news story of the day. The content of the article was shown to McChrystal before it was released to the public.

Hardly surprising, McChrystal Called to Washington to Explain Remarks

The article, in the magazine’s latest edition, quotes the general and his aides as criticizing Vice President Joseph Biden, special envoy for Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, and U.S. Ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry.

As the top U.S. civilian and military officials in Afghanistan, Eikenberry and McChrystal are required to jointly implement U.S. policy in the country.

The Rolling Stone profile, titled “The Runaway General,” mentions the first meeting that McChrystal had with President Barack Obama the week after he took office. They met with a dozen senior military officials in a Pentagon room known as The Tank. The reporter of the article cites a source familiar with the meeting saying that McChrystal thought Obama appeared “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the room filled with military brass.

‘Photo Op’

The article also describes the first one-on-one meeting McChrystal had with Obama in the Oval Office four months later, which an adviser to McChrystal called “a 10-minute photo op.”

McChrystal is described by an aide as “disappointed” in this first meeting with the president. While McChrystal voted for Obama, the two didn’t connect from the start, the article says.

The thing is, McChrystal is in charge of 142,000 troops in Afghanistan from the U.S. and 45 partner nations, which he understands to be his personal responsibility. Personal responsibility: a concept probably beyond the reach of a president who could spare all of 20 minutes – if that – for this:

Right now (emphasis added),

McChrystal is executing a strategy which took the White House months to approve. The approach involves adding 30,000 U.S. troops to carry out a counter-insurgency, which includes convincing Afghans to resist the Taliban’s takeover of parts of the country. The general said recently that this would take more time than expected.

The Obama administration dithered on a strategy and insists on a July 2011 withdrawal date – which tells the Afghans their lives are not worth helping the US since the US is scheduled to leave anyway, and then what?

So what it may come down to is, Obama Should Probably Fire McChrystal, but He Can’t

McChrystal is a big boy, and after a tenure that saw the leak of his bleak strategic review and the fallout from his London speech calling for an Afghan troop surge, I have a lot of trouble buying that McChrystal would make another goof of this magnitude.

Which makes me wonder whether we are witnessing McChrystal falling on his sword to get the word out on the Obama administration’s folly in Afghanistan. I’m not 100 percent convinced of it, but it is a real possibility.

I also very much agree with Rich that the president would be well within his rights to dismiss McChrystal over this. I just don’t think he can. The fact is that McChrystal has more credibility onAfghanistan than Obama does. And to the extent that Obama has credibility there at all (and higher approval ratings for his Afghanistan policy than his presidency generally), it is credibility imported from McChrystal. As such, I figure that firing the general would be disastrous forObama , not just on substance but politically. Fairly or unfairly, it would make his administration look petty and prideful, willing to let an (admittedly serious) breach in decorum set back our best chance for success in the longest war in American history.

Don’t blame McChrystal, blame Obama

The real trouble is that Obama never resolved the dispute within his administration over Afghanistan strategy. With the backing of Gates and the Pentagon’s top generals, McChrystal sought to apply to Afghanistan the counterinsurgency approach that succeeded over the last three years in Iraq, an option requiring the deployment of tens of thousands more troops. Biden opposed sending most of the reinforcements and argued for a “counterterrorism plus” strategy centered on preventing al-Qaeda from establishing another refuge.

In the end, Obama adopted what is beginning to look like a bad compromise. He approved most of the additional troops that McChrystal sought, but attached the July, 2011 deadline for beginning withdrawals. Since then both sides have been arguing their cases, in private and in public, to the press and to members of Congress.

McChrystal may be at fault for expressing his frustrations to Rolling Stone. He is not at fault for the lack of coherence in the Afghan campaign or the continued feuding over strategy. That is Obama’s responsibility.

We’ll see what happens next.

(Post re-edited to include omitted link & text)

UPDATE
ShrinkWrapped looks at How a new meme takes shape

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Mineral riches in Afghanistan

One of the world’s most remote, corrupt and fractional countries may soon become an extractory economy:

U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.
…
The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.

While it could take many years to develop a mining industry, the potential is so great that officials and executives in the industry believe it could attract heavy investment even before mines are profitable, providing the possibility of jobs that could distract from generations of war.

You can bet the Chinese will be there – but in what capacity?

At the same time, American officials fear resource-hungry China will try to dominate the development of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth, which could upset the United States, given its heavy investment in the region. After winning the bid for its Aynak copper mine in Logar Province, China clearly wants more, American officials said.

How big is it? It is soooo big,

The value of the newly discovered mineral deposits dwarfs the size of Afghanistan’s existing war-bedraggled economy, which is based largely on opium production and narcotics trafficking as well as aid from the United States and other industrialized countries. Afghanistan’s gross domestic product is only about $12 billion.

That amount is approximately half the GDP of Vermont.

Power Line:

What happens when you superimpose a trillion dollars worth of natural resource wealth on a primitive society? That’s what happened in Saudi Arabia, and the results were not pretty. A Defense Department memo quoted in the linked New York Times article makes the parallel explicit by suggesting that Afghanistan could become “the Saudi Arabia of lithium.” Let’s hope that doesn’t turn out to be true.

This is a gamechanger indeed. Just One Minute links to Spencer Ackerman, who posts, Vast Deposits Of Fodder For Conspiracy Theorists Discovered In Afghanistan.

First: Is the Obama administration stupid enough to go through an announced withdrawal now?

UPDATE
And, as my friend Moe puts it,

On the bright side, we’ve just been given a really, really good reason to have the Obama administration stop ignoring India. Look at a map and you’ll see why.

Check out Old Timer’s comment below for the skeptical tea leaves.

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Bringing a water pistol to a knife fight, parts 1 & 2



Bringing a water pistol to a knife fight: Part 1
Gates Says U.S. Lacks Policy to Curb Iran’s Nuclear Drive

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has warned in a secret three-page memorandum to top White House officials that the United States does not have an effective long-range policy for dealing with Iran’s steady progress toward nuclear capability, according to government officials familiar with the document.

Several officials said the highly classified analysis, written in January to President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, came in the midst of an intensifying effort inside the Pentagon, the White House and the intelligence agencies to develop new options for Mr. Obama. They include a set of military alternatives, still under development, to be considered should diplomacy and sanctions fail to force Iran to change course.

Officials familiar with the memo’s contents would describe only portions dealing with strategy and policy, and not sections that apparently dealt with secret operations against Iran, or how to deal with Persian Gulf allies.

Jennifer Rubin:

Really, it’s jaw-dropping that, at this stage, Gates must sound the alarm, reminding everyone that nothing they’ve done so far has or is likely to work. Indeed, it’s hard to see how what the Obami are presently doing won’t impair those military options. After all, Obama is giving the Iranians cover to move ahead with their nuclear program while the UN dithers over negotiations about ineffective sanctions. The problem, we must conclude, is Obama, himself, who seems blissfully unaware of his own inadequate and misguided efforts. (”Some officials said his memo should be viewed in that light: as a warning to a relatively new president that the United States was not adequately prepared. He wrote the memo after Iran had let pass a 2009 deadline set by Mr. Obama to respond to his offers of diplomatic engagement.”)

The Obami seemed unprepared for the failure of engagement last year and are only now working on a sanctions effort; Gates’ memo suggests we are now no more prepared for what is in all likelihood the outcome of the next round of dithering: an Iranian regime undeterred from pursuing its nuclear ambitions.

Scott Johnson:

As always with stories like this, one wonders about the motives of the Times’s sources. Why would anonymous officials leak word of a highly classified memorandum suggesting that the administration has no policy beyond what has proved to be empty talk? These apparently well-informed officials must think that we have something to worry about.

Or, you might look at the issue from the Obami point of view, “who, me worry?”


Bringing a water pistol to a knife fight: Part 2
If the water pistol doesn’t work, then make them laugh:
Fight Al-Qaeda with satire, ridicule: researchers

Satire and ridicule can help win the fight against Al-Qaeda by stripping it of its glamour and mystique, a team of researchers argue in a report released in London and in comments to AFP.

Beating the Islamist movement is as much about winning the battle of ideas and undermining Al-Qaeda’s counter-culture cachet as it is about conventional anti-terrorism operations, said the report.

“Terrorism must be defeated through the deliberate ‘toxification’ of the al-Qaeda brand; not by making it seem dangerous, but by exposing it as dumb,” Jamie Bartlett, one of the report’s authors, told AFP.

“Al-Qaeda has to be ridiculed as the equivalent of a middle-aged dad at a school disco: enthusiastic, incompetent and excruciatingly uncool.”

How’s this for a start? Hey Bin Laden Your Brother Married a Goat!

Somehow I can’t believe that broadcasting “Your Brother Married a Goat” to every cave on the Afghanistan/Pakistan border will win us the war on terror. First of all who knows, maybe Bin Laden’s brother has a thing for four-legged creatures. More important is that once you forget the nice “peace, love and granola,” feelings, history has taught us that Islamists respect just one thing, Raw Power. Sticks and stones may not worm, but American Munitions are a better substitute than satire.

It’s bad enough when you have incompetents making foreign policy decisions; what’s even worse is to have unprepared incompetents who lack basic street smarts.

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Iran-backed terrorists hack US drones

… in Iraq and Afghanistan, using Russian software Skygrabber,
drone
Insurgents Hack U.S. Drones
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.

Iraq, Afghanistan, but possibly also Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia

Some of the most detailed evidence of intercepted feeds has been discovered in Iraq, but adversaries have also intercepted drone video feeds in Afghanistan, according to people briefed on the matter. These intercept techniques could be employed in other locations where the U.S. is using pilotless planes, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, they said.

Drones are inherently vulnerable:

Gen. Deptula, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said there were inherent risks to using drones since they are remotely controlled and need to send and receive video and other data over great distances. “Those kinds of things are subject to listening and exploitation,” he said, adding the military was trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones’ feeds.

The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.

Why weren’t drone communications encripted in the first place?

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What was missing from the speech

US-POLITICS-OBAMA-AFGHANISTAN

What was missing from last night’s speech? The word win.

Instead, what we got is this:

Now, let me be clear: There has never been an option before me that called for troop deployments before 2010, so there has been no delay or denial of resources necessary for the conduct of the war during this review period. Instead, the review has allowed me to ask the hard questions and to explore all the different options, along with my national security team, our military, and civilian leadership in Afghanistan, and our key partners.

Every time I hear Obama say “Now, let me be clear,” I hold on to my wallet, but this time he’s not talking about his disastrous economic policy. He’s justifying his dithering in terms of “no one pressed me for it, so why not dither?”

Then he gets to the most important part of the speech:

This review is now complete. And as commander-in-chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.

After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home. These are the resources that we need to seize the initiative, while building the Afghan capacity that can allow for a responsible transition of our forces out of Afghanistan.

It’s in our vital interest to send 30,000 troops to hold things down until… he can have them return home in time for the August 2011 Democratic Convention?

Victor Davis Hanson summarizes the rest of the talking points:

  • 1) Bush did it.
  • 2) Avoiding the V-word.
  • 3) Multilateral phantoms. The allies, contrary to the president’s expectation, will not be escalating with us. They are afraid of another Suez, and think that this drawn-out decision does not inspire a great deal of confidence about Obama’s desire to defeat the enemy. Our allies fear that we are fickle, and that Afghanistan is like Guantanamo —sorta closed, sorta open. When the multilateral, post-Western Obama ignores allies and reaches out to enemies, it is hard to galvanize allies in a traditional alliance.
  • 4) Deficit. How strange on this military occasion to hear worries about fiscal responsibilities from a president who has just given the country its largest annual budget deficits in history, and who will, according to his own schedule, add more to the national debt than all previous presidents. In a speech intended to win support for more troops, Obama worries more about the $30 billion cost of Afghanistan, even while he borrows $1.7 trillion for everything from AIG bailouts to GM takeovers to “cash for clunkers.”
  • 5) Partisanship
  • 6) Stanley Baldwin, not Winston Churchill.

Hanson says Obama sounded like a dean. I prefer Paul Mirengoff‘s take,

To be precise, the speech sounded to me like a slick lawyer trying to sell a dubious settlement to a skeptical client or, in this case, set of clients.

Der Speigel says

Never before has a speech by President Barack Obama felt as false as his Tuesday address announcing America’s new strategy for Afghanistan.
…
One didn’t have to be a cadet on Tuesday to feel a bit of nausea upon hearing Obama’s speech. It was the least truthful address that he has ever held. He spoke of responsibility, but almost every sentence smelled of party tactics. He demanded sacrifice, but he was unable to say what it was for exactly.

An additional 30,000 US soldiers are to march into Afghanistan — and then they will march right back out again. America is going to war — and from there it will continue ahead to peace. It was the speech of a Nobel War Prize laureate.

In the speech, when speaking about Iraq, he stated,

Today, after extraordinary costs, we are bringing the Iraq war to a responsible end.

“Responsible end”: Will that phrase become the “Peace with honor” of our time?

UPDATE:
Comedy Central: Barack Obama Enjoins America to Hide Under a Bunch of Coats While the War in Afghanistan Sorts Itself Out Somehow

Welcome, Anchoress readers. Please visit often.

Erick Erickson:

In 4608 words, he did not once mention the word “victory” and the closest he came to using the word “win” was those three letters appearing in the word “withdrawing.”

h/t Moe

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(Rick Moran and I talked about the speech in today’s podcast)

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