The two main risks with this kind of disinformation campaign are that they start to actively pursecute those who disagree and present more pessimistic (or realistic) assessments and end up believing their own spin, preventing much needed adjustments and re-evaluations.

The disinformation campaign by General McChrystal is just the continuation of US policy about Afghanistan since 2001 when US invaded Afghanistan.

During the siege of Kunduz in November 2001, the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan which is fully under the control of Pakistani governments, from where Mullah Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since.

As General McChrystal himself so clearly noted in his August, 2009 assessment to the President, Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan is mostly directed from Pakistan-based Afghan Taliban leaders. Following is General’s verbatim assessment:

1. Most insurgent fighters in Afghanistan are directed by a small number of Afghan senior leaders based in Pakistan that work through an alternative political infrastructure in Afghanistan.
2. The Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year.
3. Afghanistan's insurgency is clearly supported from Pakistan. Senior leaders of the major Afghan insurgent groups (QST, HQN and HiG) are based in Pakistan, are linked with al Qaeda and other violent extremist groups, and are reportedly aided by some elements of Pakistan's lSI. Al Qaeda and associated movements (AQAM) based in Pakistan channel foreign fighters, suicide bombers, and technical assistance into Afghanistan, and offer ideological motivation, training, and financial support.

Witness how Pakistan is dithering on US demands for Pakistan to act against Haqqani’s HQN network in North Waziristan and Mullah Mohammed Omar’s QST network in Quetta. Pakistani governments and Army do NOT feel threatened by Al Qaeda and Afghan Taliban regardless of how many times US repeats it.

As such it is bizarre to say the least for US governments to even claim that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are in danger of falling in to the hands of Islamic fundamentalists if Taliban insurgency wins in Afghanistan when Pakistani governments are sheltering, supporting and protecting the very leaders of this Taliban insurgency.

So US itself is directly responsible for the continuing deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan because US is allowing Pakistani governments to shelter, support and protect Afghan Taliban outfits who plot and kill US/NATO soldiers while simultaneously same US showers same Pakistani government with billions in US aid.

With an ally like Pakistan, US/NATO mission in Afghanistan is doomed to fail no matter how much money and manpower US/NATO pour there.

Though it may seem as if one is putting words in the General's mouth, yet, I imagine Gen, McChrystal is trying to say that, the war in Afghanistan is a virtual reality war, and it only exists in our minds, or rather, as a figment of our collective imagination.
khairi janbek.paris/france

Wait a minute: Let's be fair here. What if, *instead* of saying that "[t]he biggest thing is in convincing the Afghan people" McChrystal said that it *was* "a physical war in terms of how many people you kill [and] how much ground you capture [ad] how many bridges you blow up"? I.e., the exact opposite of what he said?

I know what would happen: People here and indeed everywhere would be howling about what a hopeless, retrograde, dinosaurian thinker he was, stuck in WWII somewhere.

Clearly, *if* this Afghan adventure is going to succeed—and I personally don't think so but that's besides the point—it can *only* do so if indeed the Afghan people do come to perceive the Taliban as losers not worthy of support. It is a guerilla war, guerillas win by not losing, they don't lose so long as they have the support of the people, and so one of the most profound ways they do really lose is indeed having the people come to believe they are on the losing side and not worth supporting.

Yes, McC's latter words about it all being "in the minds of the participants" do literally mean in *our* minds too, and to some significant degree that's even true too, but it seems obvious to me that as per his own express introductory words he was talking about the minds of the "Afghan" people.

I don't gainsay that we've had more than our share of Generals who go far beyond their duty to try to accomplish the ends they are given by white-washing their progress or lack thereof in the minds of the American people. I somewhat understand it in that their egos are involved and they want to succeed in their duty of course, and rallying the country behind them can only help same, but it's still white-washing.

I don't know that this is what McC' at least is doing here however. Indeed isn't it even possible that what he's trying to say to us between the lines (because he can't say it out loud) is "hey, look at how bloody impossible my mission is when I can't win by merely blowing up bridges and etc. but instead am essentially charged with changing the mindset of the entire Afghani population...."

Obviously I don't know for sure and maybe I'm wrong: I know my conclusion about Petraeus is that he at least was somewhat of a publicity-seeking white-washer, wanting and desperately hoping that his precious COIN strategy would work so as to make a hero out of him, and so in my opinion he went beyond his proper bounds by making what I thought were excessive promises about it. (Which have far to go to be fulfilled, and indeed look like they won't be given the need to delay our leaving from Iraq.)

But I think we have to be at least a little understanding of the position of the military in these situations. Ideally we shouldn't blink if a General were to stand up and say "While I will pursue the mission I have been given as smartly and as energetically as I possibly can I do not believe anyone can succeed." But everyone knows what would happen to such a General, the politicians giving him his mission would sack him in a heartbeat.

But that's not the *General's* fault, it's the politician's. And except maybe in the extreme case (such as, say, McArthur trying to gin up an independent political basis for doing war differently than his political masters wanted), it is indeed on our *politicians* that we ought to hold overwhelmingly responsible and blame if our military is given an impossible mission.

hello from from Turkey . my name is ahmet yurdadogan im the one the Turkish members of the FORE?GN POL?CY magazineS online edition. since my childhood world changed a lot. in my childhood (late 70's) there were one common enemy(Brejnef's USSR). BREJNEF doesn'T smiles. there were two main block(Nato and Warsaw pakts). we were in pro-USA pact and we were close friend with USA for common security. we need ours . after the collapse of USSR and fall of berlin war everythink has changed but now new fashion thhreat extremist and el-kaide. last december in my house i was watching USA senato about terrorism. mccristal was speaaking one journalist asked him. in afganistan el-kaide how can be succesufuly? example they doesn't have NAVY or A?R FORCES? later talented general mccristal answered that quistion: yes we are stronger we have air force and navy. taliban doesn't have thats. but they have CACTUC?A ROCKET BATTALL?ONS. told to journalist. my opinion that was perfect answer USA must be proud have a general like mccristal. he seems like very foxy. in my house in turkey i have sateltte sysem i can watch PENTAGON CHANELL. i been watched USA congress interwies with geneal Petraus and christal in early december 2009 in that chanell.

Couldn't that statement have come from any US general in charge of any war since Vietnam? Doesn't the military blame our failure there due to the collapse of domestic public support for the war? It's my understanding that the lessons from Vietnam (from not including enemy body counts, etc.) have been ingrained in the future generations of generals. You could see these lessons at work, the military's desire to control the domestic propaganda at work in Iraq (and if Afghanistan, cf. Pat Tillman), so I don't consider it a very telling statement. All that said, I agree our current policy is incoherent and statements from the military should not betaken at face value.

I am not an expert on military affairs, in Af-Pak or elsewhere. But one does not need to be such an expert to understand that what is happening today to the Afghan people is the result of depraved and pathological behavior. I wonder what a psychiatric profile of McChrystal would reveal. Bright, articulate, and sick. He is responsible for killing men, women and children in a helpless nation 8,000 miles from the US. Over their corpses, he says this is not about killing people. Under his command are people at Creech AF Base in Nevada who spend 9-5 launching village-killing missiles from drones, and then spend the evening at the tables in Las Vegas 45 miles away. They do this day-in and day-out.
My bet is that McChrystal and his ilk are really, by all ordinary standards, clinically ill people. Killing other than in defense is pathological, and imagining killing in Afghanistan to be in defense of the United States is a pathologocal distortion of reality.

This article is some seriously shallow thinking. Do you think the people of Afghanistan read the New York Times? Do you think they sit around the camp fire after a hard day and have the following conversation:

Afghan 1 "Did you hear what McChrystal said in The New York Times today?"
Afghan 2 "No, what did he say?"
Afghan 1 "He said they have made significant progress in setting the conditions in 2009, and beginning some progress, and that they'll make real progress in 2010."
Afghan 2 "Oh, that's interesting. Maybe it's time to switch over to their side."

Seriously, where do they find you guys? You actually teach at Harvard? For real? That's astonishing.

This is an unusually poor post that demonstrates how so-called realists have a serious blindspot when it comes to the new brand of counter-insurgency that folks like Patraeus and McChrystal are advocating/developing. Materialists simply can't understand the basic idea that the material superiority of the United States means almost nothing if it is not coupled with power (power being the willing participation of people in Afghanistan) and legitimacy.

Walt takes the quote out of context and suggests that "perception" only relates to US military successes. If you read the full interview in Spiegel, McCrystal clearly means to indicate that the war in Afghanistan depends not primarily on killing insurgents but doing things that demonstrate to ordinary Afghans that they should not be the next insurgent. In other words, "the battlefield" is not the issue, the sense the well-being of people is being served by the United States military is. I'm not saying this is possible in Afghanistan, but Walt's post reveals that he doesn't even understand the basic premise of what the military is now trying to achieve there.

To put a finer point on it and use the not always apt but in this case workable analogy: In the Vietnam War we killed two million people and they killed about 60,000 Americans. No materialist explanation can possible explain how we lost the war with such overwhelming physical superiority. But the military is trying to learn that lesson and they have at least come to understand that all of that superior fire power and killing won't do a wit for US interests without power (in an Arendtian sense) and legitimacy -- in fact, physical superiority may only drain our power away.

Wow, you mean that American generals lie to themselves and the American public about their deadly, pointless, criminal, interminable Middle Eastern wars? Are you suggesting that the actual US interest may have less to do with it than ideology? Do you think that our Counter-Insurgency strategy is like something a young child would invent to explain why they had to break the china? Dude, please stop rocking my world!