McChrystal "wants a blank cheque for a jalopy on which he offers no warranty"

By Steve Hynd.

Paul McGeough is the chief correspondent for the Sydney Morning Herald, author of "Kill Khalid" and a veteran reporter of over 20 years experience, including more than 20 assignments in Afghanistan since 2001. Today, he published the text of his speech to a conference on the Afghanistan crisis organised by the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra. If you read one thing this weekend, read this. It's a long piece and a comprehensive demolishing of arguments for continued escalation in Afghanistan. He points out that McChrystal's surge will get there too late by McChrystal's own timeline and notes that Afghan government corruption is the natural and inevitable result of the occupying Coalition's policies over eight years. His overall conclusion is that:

McChrystal, I fear, has arrived too late – for Afghanistan and for Washington. He is asking for a huge act of faith on two fronts – first, by the international community; and second by the Afghan people. But after almost a decade of these constituencies having their trust abused, the miracle promised by McChrystal is a mirage, an ephemeral outcome that even with inevitable, subsequent requests for thousands more troops and billions more in reconstruction dollars likely will not eventuate. The general wants a blank cheque for a jalopy on which he offers no warranty.

I have been asked to address the “strength of the insurgency.” But quite apart from the usual considerations of its fighting numbers, weapons and funding – which I'll come to – the Afghanistan insurgency's greatest strength is the combined, and for a long time, quite deliberate weakness of the Coalition and its treacherous allies in the Kabul government. The McChrystal blueprint might have worked in Year Two or even in Year Five of the conflict – and I stress 'might have' – but at this stage it's too little and it's too late.

Read, as they say, the whole thing.

Comments

[John Ballard]

Only six pages printed out. Not bad.
I have yet to read it, but I picked up a page from the printer and this jumped off at me:

The greatest strength the Taliban has had – and still has – is time. I'm indebted to Ambassador Eikenberry for first drawing to my attention a quote that already is a leitmotiv of this conflict. As he told it, either he or one of his officers was quizzing a Taliban captive on the insurgency's view of how the crisis would unfold. “The trouble with you American's,” the prisoner said, “is you have watches – we have time.” And it was the Coalition that gave the Taliban time – in spades.

In retrospect years of neglect, putting Afghanistan on the back burner, may turn out to be a worse legacy of the Bush years than the financial crisis and deficit together. Quagmire doesn't begin to cover it. It's hard to believe half a decade went by that fast. But that's what homeowners say when they discover termite damage.