Stan Geiger

McChrystal's Plan

I saw General Stanley McChrystal on 60 Minutes the other night. He’s a good soldier, no doubt. But I have problems with his plan for Afghanistan that was somehow leaked to the press.

I agree with the general when it comes to his determination that we need to back off with the firepower. Missiles can’t tell good guys from bad guys. And we aren’t going to win many friends by killing the innocent.

I disagree with the general when it comes to his determination that we need to put more troops in country to defend the Afghan citizenry. Defending Afghans is not our job.

Just a couple of days ago, a 16-year-old boy was shot dead in the streets of Tulsa as he walked off a school bus. We can’t defend our own people, yet we talk of putting soldiers’ lives at risk and spending billions defending residents of another country half a world away? C’mon.

I have written on my stance relative to Afghanistan. It is time to leave. Not to ignore, but to leave. We should maintain intelligence operations, and we should stand ready to launch military incursions if necessary. But it’s time to withdraw the standing ground force.

I’ll take things a step further in this writing. It’s time to withdraw our forces from South Korea and Europe. There was a time when maintaining a military presence in these areas was justifiable. But today, South Korea is a fully-functioning economic power. If South Koreans figure they need a massive deterrent force, let them pay for it. I would say the same for the Europeans. These stepchildren have relied on us long enough.

Uncle Sam will borrow $1.8 trillion in this fiscal year alone, people. We’ve got to cut federal spending, period. If we don’t, we’re screwed.

Obama yapped much about the $10 billion a month we were spending in Iraq during the campaign. What has he done? How about nothing? So I guess we’re still spending $10 billion a month in Iraq, right?

On the subject of defense, go back to WWII. We had commanders in that war that all adhered to a principle: You can’t win a war playing defense. From Eisenhower to MacArthur to Patton to Nimitz to Bradley, they all understood offense wins wars.

Abraham Lincoln pulled his hair out for years as he tried to find generals that would prosecute the Civil War. He finally landed on Grant, Sherman and Sheridan. They prosecuted the war, and the war was soon over.

The problem with Afghanistan is, there is nothing to win. McChrystal’s plan, to me, acknowledges that. He doesn’t speak of winning anything; he speaks of not losing. And there you go, right back to Vietnam.

We did what needed to be done in the wake of 9/11. In fact, we did what probably should have been done before 9/11. We went to Afghanistan and busted up a terrorist organization that had taken over a country. Great; mission accomplished. Let’s scoot. The bad guys know we can come back and kick some more asses anytime we choose.

It may sound like I’m pooping on General McChrystal. I’m not. Like I said, he’s a good soldier. He may be packing four stars, and he may be in command of a theater, but he has superiors. It may well be that he is saying one thing in private to his superiors while saying another in public light because he is being ordered to do so.

That takes me back to a fellow named Yamamoto. Once upon a time, he was Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, he was the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack.

Yamamoto, at great risk to his career and possibly his life, argued against going to war with the west. He had spent time in the west, and he knew Japan couldn’t survive a war with the U.S. because of U.S. industrial superiority. In other words, he knew we could replace lost ships and planes and then some. Japan couldn’t.

I recall reading that a member of the Japanese royal family, shortly before Pearl Harbor, asked Yamamoto what he thought. The admiral replied that if war with the west came, he would run wild for six months or maybe a year. Then Japan would lose.

Finding a more prophetic statement is hard to do. The Japanese Navy did run wild for six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Then came the Battle of Midway. Japan lost four aircraft carriers and hundreds of planes and seasoned pilots in that battle. It was the turning point in the war in the Pacific.

I’m sure Yamamoto’s public comments differed from his private comments. He was a good soldier.

McChrystal’s plan calls for a massive buildup of Afghan forces. Then, I guess, we turn it all over to them. Politicians sing out in praise. How Vietnam does that sound?

By the time Lyndon Johnson left office, we had half a million troops in South Vietnam. New strategies came and went. We bombed the hell out of North Vietnam. We moved troops into Laos and Cambodia. We did everything we could have done short of launching an invasion into North Vietnam or using nukes. So then came the plan to build a South Vietnamese army and withdraw.

George Will, on ABC this past Sunday, noted that when we pulled out of South Vietnam the country was left with the fourth-largest army in the world. Ten days after the last of our people left, North Vietnamese tanks were rolling through Saigon.

I’m reminded of a line from the movie ‘Full Metal Jacket.’ American soldiers were approached by a Vietnamese fellow looking to pimp his sister. One of the soldiers offered to sell the pimp a South Vietnamese army rifle. He said it had never been fired and only been dropped once.

If the locals don’t want to get it done, we can’t get it done. It’s time to leave Afghanistan.

---