McKiernan Put Between A Petraeus And A Hard Place

By Steve Hynd

Gareth Porter writes that General David Petraeus hasn't lost the political sense that made him the "teflon general" for so long:

U.S. Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, whose commando raids and airstrikes against suspected Taliban targets have caused large numbers of civilian casualties that have angered Afghans, have quietly been put under the "tactical control" of the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David McKiernan, for the first time.

An order issued Tuesday at the direction of CENTCOM chief Gen. David Petraeus gives McKiernan authority over all operations by Special Operations units stationed in the country, as Col. Gregory Julian, McKiernan's spokesperson, confirmed in an e-mail to IPS. The order, which has not been made public, modifies previous command arrangements which had excluded U.S. Special Operations forces from McKiernan’s command authority.

Although the order follows a period of rising Afghan protests against Special Operations raids, there is no indication that Petraeus intends for the change in command arrangements to bring about any fundamental change in such raids.

Nevertheless, it appears that those raids have become a political hot potato, which Petraeus prefers to be in McKiernan’s hands rather than his own, particularly as Afghanistan heads into a politically charged period leading up to a presidential election in August.

...Petraeus apparently prefers to have McKiernan bear the direct responsibility for operations that are likely to generate even greater Afghan and international outrage over the continued killing of civilians. In the absence of Tuesday’s order, Petraeus’s command authority over the Joint Special Operations headquarters in Afghanistan would have put him squarely in the line of fire were the raids to become a major political issue.

The order, however, puts Gen. McKiernan between Petraeus and the issue.

Fun, huh? Petraeus has always been one of the best at playing the political and media game uniformed senior officers have to play to reach the top - claiming credit when it was there to claim (the Surge, "taming" Mosul only to have it fall apart after he was gone) and sidestepping criticism where necessary. The most obvious example of the latter being his inability to police procurement for the Iraqi military in 2004 in a climate of corruption which has led to one of his aides convicted for accepting bribes and leading to over 180,000 "missing" weapons, at least some of which fell into extremist and criminal hands. Despite being the man where the buck was supposed to stop, Petraeus was treated with immense deferrence by both the military and the media. If he has decided to aim for even higher command, as has been repeatedly rumored, keeping a teflon coating will be essential, and he obviously knows it.

Comments

[Andy]

Gareth Porter doesn't know what he's talking about. What evidence does he have this change was for "political" reasons? None! He just pulls it out of thin air.

Of course, Gareth doesn't even mention, much less consider, more mundane explanations like unity of command - a chronic and frequently identified problem. Nor does he seem to realize that the McKiernan assignment is not an additional "insulating" layer of command at all, even though he mentions VADM McRaven in the article. All Petraeus did was move tactical control from one of his subordinate flag officers to a different one. IOW, if his goal was to insulate himself from the political fallout of SoF raids, he already had that in Admiral McRaven. Porter's argument is further undermined by the fact that McKiernan with have actual control of the SoF forces, so if they are screwing up he has the authority to restrict them. For Porter's insinuations to be valid, McKiernan's authority would have to be bypassed and he's have to be a complete idiot to boot.

[Steve Hynd]

I asked Gareth for his response to Andy's comment. Here it is in full as emailled, with his permission:

"The commenter argues that there are "more mundane explanations like unity of command" to explain the Petraeus order about which I wrote. But that begs the question of why Special Operations forces have not been under the "tactical control" of the U.S. commander in Afghanistan since 2005 of 2006. That's between three and four years that CENTCOM has seen fit to give the Special Forces a free hand in Afghanistan, contrary to the unity of command principle. And of course Gen. Petraeus has been in charge of CENTCOM since last October, but the lack of unity of command in Afghanistan persisted for another six months -- that is, until the issue of civilian casualties became much more politically tense. Now if Petraeus had wanted to actually do something to change the actual policy toward targeted raids, he could have done so during these past six months, but he did not. Therefore it is difficult to explain the timing of this order as related to unity of command.

The second objection is that Vice Adm. McRaven is no different from McKiernan in regard to subordinate status. That argument fails to take into account the obvious political reality that McKiernan, as commander of all U.S. and NATO troops in the country, is now an important political-military figure in his own rights, whereas McRaven is completely unknown outside the military. If the issue blows up in the future, McKiernan obviously will have to take the heat. If it were to blow up without McKiernan having direct responsibility, it would be Petraeus, not McRaven, who would be hauled before a Congressional committee or the media kleig lights over it.

The assertion my interpretation is undermined by that the fact McKiernan will have authority to restrict the Special Operations forces if they are "screwing up" undermines is completely lacking in logic and again misses the basic point that none of these guys has demonstrated the will to do what Gen. Barno had the wisdom to do five years ago -- stop SOF raids that have marginal impact on the Taliban but devastating impact on the willingness of Afghans to support continued U.S. military presence. One hopes that it will happen in the future, but the evidence of such an intent is lacking.

Incidentally, I asked McKiernan's spokesman point blank for an explanation for the timing of the order -- in light of evidence that the SOF had not acted as though it were in force since last October, as he had claimed. He did not answer my e-mail.
The objection that I have no evidence for the conclusion that the Special Operations forces' targeted raids on Taliban targets is a political hot potato and that Petraeus wants McKiernan to take responsibility for it is lacks elementary logic. The commenter suggests that the fact that McKiernan could now halt the raids is an argument against that interpretation."

Regards, Steve

[JustPlainDave]

I don't think that Gareth has the labels-personalities and/or the relationships entirely correct, which is I think causing some confusion in interpretation. There's more than one SOF formation running around out there.

McRaven (who's actually quite publicly known for an operator - I've known of him for a bit over 15 years) is head of JSOC. This means that the *JSOC* task force in Afghanistan answers [answered] to him though, as I understand it, it is generally commanded by one of his deputies.

However, the JSOC task force is a distinct entity from CJSOTF-A, which is built around an Army SFG (currently 3 Group, I believe). The head of CJSOTF-A is the commanding officer of whatever SFG is the core of the task force (i.e., a COL). This formation had previously reported directly to McKiernan, wearing his hat of American commander, but of late reports to him via something called Combined Forces Special Operations Component Com­mand-Afghanistan, headed by a BG Reeder, who is newly promoted from being Olson's [SOCOM commander] XO.

What it all sounds like to me is that they've now arranged things so that the "black" JSOC task force and the "white" SOCOM taskforce (JSOTF-A) now answer to CFSOCC-A rather than the JSOC task force "stovepiping" up its distinct chain of command, which IIRC goes directly to SecDef and NCA.

Much of the above to summarize Sean Naylor's article here.

Given the particular nature of the SOF command relations (i.e., CJSOTF-A was already OPCONed to McKiernan and JSOC would never be seen as being a problem Petraeus "owned" if he didn't have OPCON [JSOC's command arrangement is unique]), I don't think this change has a lot to do with Petraeus making a teflon move - a lot more like the natural outgrowth of viewing everything as a cohesive whole than a distinct set of problems.

Why didn't they have unity of command previously? MHO, biggest part is because the political echelon of the previous administration *loved* JSOC - "JSOC is awesome" was the quote I recall.

[Andy]

I think Dave has explained it well.

As for Mr. Porter's rebuttal, he still provides no direct evidence for his contentions - it's all based on interpretation of timing and other weak linkages. I don't think he's adequately justified his assertions based on logic either, considering there are many other legitimate military reasons (unity of command is only one) for Petraeus to make this move. Mr. Porter seems to think that these SoF forces will continue to be off the leash - if so that might support his argument, but I doubt that is going to happen. He took a more holistic approach in Iraq and he's getting ready to do something similar in Afghanistan. This move prepares for that by reigning in the JSOC "cowboys," bringing them under more direct control, and ensuring they are a part of his planning and not separate from it, as they have been.