McChrystal Assessment Paints Dire Picture of Afghan War

from : The wall street journal / http://online.wsj.com

By PETER SPIEGEL

Associated Press

A U.S. soldier at a base in Afghanistan's East Paktika province on Sunday.

WASHINGTON -- Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, told the Obama administration last month that the situation in the country is "deteriorating" and that without additional resources, the U.S.-led coalition could lose the war.

The conclusions, contained in a 66-page assessment, were first reported on the web site of the Washington Post Sunday night and confirmed by a senior administration official.

After weeks of speculation, details of Gen. Stanley McChrystal's report on Afghanistan were released. What's striking about his assessment, WSJ's Peter Spiegel reports, is the urgency of his message.

The declassified version of the assessment paints a dire picture of the war up until this summer, saying that the allied effort is losing support among the Afghan people and that it must regain the initiative in the next 12 months or risk a situation where "defeating the insurgency is no longer possible."

"Additional resources are required, but focusing on force or resource requirements misses the point entirely," Gen. McChrystal wrote in a four-page "commander's summary" at the start of the assessment. "The key take away from this assessment is the urgent need for a significant change to our strategy and the way that we think and operate."

Some contents of Gen. McChrystal's assessment – including the need to focus the NATO-led mission on protecting Afghan population centers and enlarging the Afghan security forces to assist in that goal – have been reported before by The Wall Street Journal and other news organizations.

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Gen. Stanley McChrystal

But made public as a comprehensive summary for the first time, the assessment is sweeping in its criticism of the war effort and unsparing in the obstacles that need to be cleared in order to achieve even limited victory in Afghanistan.

The assessment was originally sent by Gen. McChrystal to the Pentagon and NATO commanders in Belgium as a classified document, but the senior administration official said a declassified version was made public Sunday night after the Washington Post obtained an original version.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said the Post consulted senior Pentagon officials about which parts of the assessment could put allied operations at risk and agreed to excise sensitive segments of the document before making it public.

Although the assessment was classified, senior military officials said it was only at the "confidential" level, and several had urged it be made public in order to better explain to political leaders and the American people the new campaign being undertaken in Afghanistan by Gen. McChrystal, who took command in June.

In the assessment, Gen. McChrystal called for nothing short of an entire overhaul of the way the war is being fought, shifting operations away from hunting down bands of insurgents to a more classic counterinsurgency campaign aimed foremost at protecting Afghan civilians.

Top U.S. General Warns of Afghanistan Failure

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The Pentagon is expected to ask for more U.S. troops to turn the situation around, and the ball is in the president's court. Fox's Doug Luzader has the story from Washington. Video courtesy of Fox News.

Although the assessment made no specific requests for additional U.S. forces, Gen. McChrystal also sent clear signals that such a request is likely to come. "Resources will not win this war, but under-resourcing could lose it," he wrote.

Mr. Morrell said the Pentagon was disappointed the document was made public, saying Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates intended for President Barack Obama to have time to absorb the assessment before it was delivered to a wider audience.

"[It] is a classified pre-decisional document, intended to provide President Obama and his national security team with the basis for a very important discussion about where we are now in Afghanistan and how to best to get to where we want to be," Mr. Morrell said.

Despite the dire picture painted in the assessment, Gen. McChrystal was clear that he believes the NATO mission can still be victorious, writing bluntly "success is achievable." But he also wrote that ISAF – the name given to NATO's International Security and Assistance Force in Afghanistan – is poorly suited to fighting the kind of counterinsurgency mission needed in the country.

"The insurgency cannot defeat us militarily; but we can defeat ourselves," Gen. McChrystal wrote.

ISAF must change its "operational culture" to interact more closely with the Afghan people, Gen. McChrystal wrote, acknowledging that it is a tactic that could lead to more NATO casualties, since it will move soldiers out of fortified bases.

He also calls for a restructuring of ISAF's command structure so that his headquarters in Kabul can more effectively run the multinational force, where many countries insist on abiding by their own rules of engagement.

Write to Peter Spiegel at peter.spiegel@wsj.com

The views expressed in this article are the sole responsibility of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this website.

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