Two comments:

Contrary to what many (but not all) commentators seem to think, the firing of Stanley McChrystal and his replacement by General David Petraeus is not that significant.

I think the conventional wisdom here is that we shouldn't expect big changes with the changing of generals, "many (but not all) commentators" notwithstanding.

There is also no reason to believe Petraeus will achieve significantly different results because the problem in Afghanistan is not the quality of our generals. ... The real problem is that our campaign in Afghanistan is like trying to nail jelly to the wall.

I have seen and heard a number of blogs and mainstream news outlets point to our civilian leadership in Afghanistan as an issue.

In November of last year, Mearsheimer wrote the opinions below. I think he is right--continuing to fight the Afghan war has very much to do with American politics, rather than strategic necessities.

"In Afghanistan, as in Vietnam, it simply does not matter whether the United States wins or loses. It makes no sense for the Obama administration to expend more blood and treasure to vanquish the Taliban. The United States should accept defeat and immediately begin to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan.

Of course, President Obama will never do such a thing. Instead, he will increase the American commitment to Afghanistan, just as Lyndon Johnson did in Vietnam in 1965. The driving force in both cases is domestic politics. Johnson felt that he had to escalate the fight in Vietnam because otherwise the Republicans would lambaste him for "losing Vietnam," the same way they accused President Harry Truman of "losing China" in the late 1940s.

Obama and his fellow Democrats know full well that if the United States walks away from Afghanistan now, the Republicans will accuse them of capitulating to terrorism and undermining our security. And this charge will be leveled at them for decades to come, harming Democrats at the polls come election time. The Democrats have no intention of letting that happen."

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/node/68820?page=0,1

In the meantime, while the US government plays politics, innocent men, women, and children both here and Afghanistan pay the price--often the ultimate price...

we can't have anything that resembles a victory as long as Karzai is there. The worst part is the Chinese will get all those mineral resources just like they got the oil in Iraq. All that United States blood spilled for nothing. All I got was a bankrupted America. Can someone please explain to me how a country pays for 2 wars with tax cuts?

This war is now America's longest. Why did that happen? I would also like to know what victory resemebles in the AfPak region.

Your last three paragraphs contain all the wisdom we need about Iraq, Afghanistan, and for that matter Iran, if our leaders ever seriously consider going to war there. Hopefully, Obama will prove to be wiser than his predecessors.

While Petraeus can provide calming influence after leadership change, his close relationship with Pakistani General Kayani can very well doom the chances for success of US Afghan mission.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates justified Pakistan’s terrorist connections, alluding to a “deficit of trust” between Washington, DC and Islamabad. Mr Gates also said that there was “some justification” for Pakistan's concerns about past American policies. Gen David Patraeus, rushed in with an apologia for his Pakistani friends, by claiming that while Faisal was inspired by militants in Pakistan, he did not necessarily have contacts with the militants which is proven to be wrong. Both Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Patraeus fancy themselves to be “soldier statesmen” a la Gen Dwight Eisenhower. Adm Mullen has visited Pakistan 15 times and Gen Patraeus no less frequently. Both evidently have high opinions of their abilities to persuade Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to crack down on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line. This is where rubber meets the road for the famed General.

According to Afghan Taliban commanders’ interviews with Matt Waldman, a Harvard Professor, the Pakistani ISI orchestrates, sustains and strongly influences the Taliban insurgency movement. The Afghan Taliban commanders also say that ISI gives sanctuary to both Taliban and Haqqani groups, and provides huge support in terms of training, funding, munitions, and supplies. In the words of these Afghan Taliban commanders, this is ‘as clear as the sun in the sky’.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal had confirmed the existence of QST in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Unless and until Gates, Mullen and Petraeus trio is willing to accept that Pakistan is a ‘problem’ rather than a ‘solution’, US Afghan mission will continue to suffer.

Sorry, that's not true. Failure would make al Qaeda a lot stronger, as they and the Taliban would have a secure stronghold from which to menace Pakistan. Which has nuclear weapons, ad has also been experiencing a civil war that easily rivals Iraq in 2005. The main difference being that Iraq's insurgency didn't have significant supporters in Iraq's government, who wanted to use them as leverage for a future coup.

As long as Pakistan is willing to actually fight the Taliban, Afghanistan remains important - because it can make Pakistan's task hopeless. The reverse is also true, by the way. If Pakistan will not fight al-Qaeda and the Taliban, there can be no victory, and little even of significant improvement, in Afghanistan.

Now, Afghanistan is a secondary venue, as it always has been. Which is why it was a mistake for Obama to focus on it so much as a way of scoring political points. So, how's that workin' for ya, O?

_"Victory" in Afghanistan -- whatever that might mean -- wouldn't make al Qaeda a lot weaker; and "failure" wouldn't make them much stronger either. Putting a new general in charge doesn't change that calculus at all."_

There is no "do-over" here. Like Dr. Walt said, the decision to relieve General Stanley McChrystal from his command is not a major development. CNN, Fox, and MSNBC obviously think it is (besides the oil spill, all three cable news networks have been struggling to find worthwhile stories), but in the long run, the overall strategy is basically the same. Both men- Petraeus and McChrystal- firmly believe in the tenants of counterinsurgency doctrine; both men were intimately involved with the President's national security staff during last fall's Afghan policy review; both men served in Iraq; and both have entered their positions when their theater was going badly (Petraeus in 2007 and McChrystal in 2009). And besides, it seems like some people have forgotten that Gen. Petraeus re-invented COIN in the U.S. Military and brought it back into the ranks of the army (COIN was actually used successfully in Vietnam, a few years before the U.S. left).

So to think that the strategy and the course of the war will change overnight is ill suited. "Winning hearts and minds" is still priority number one, and southern Afghanistan is still the central theater in this war (although the north is starting to feel the heat as well). The only difference is that Petraeus is now in command, and McChrystal is now on the sidelines.

If there is one aspect of the war that will hopefully stay the same, it is the military's relationship with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, which is still relatively close compared to his relationship with Eikenberry and Holbrooke. There is only one potential consequence of removing McChrystal...Karzai may retreat further from America's grasp and lose more trust in NATO than he has already lost (McChrystal was the only man that Karzai actually got along with). Although from Petraeus' track-record, this shouldn't be a problem.

http://www.depetris.wordpress.com

The appointment of David Petraeus augurs little relief. General McChrystal was in charge of executing the early stages of Petraeus' doctrine. This is a real disaster in the making if we look at the numbers.

McChrystal's Commander's Initial Assessment of last August 2009 (of which we got to see a declassified bit) appears to have been based on Petraeus' "COIN" (counterinsurgency) doctrine. That requires far more soldiers than the 150000 currently occupying Afghanistan, over 500000. Supposedly, below that critical half million, the "insurgency" cannot be defeated.

Since Obama came into office, the number of US and entourage (NATO, mercenaries, Afghans of various orders, etc.) soldiers has more than doubled. The numbers are now roughly the same as the Soviet Union had there in the 1980's. The doubling of the number of occupying soldiers has led to a doubling of the number of targets and, thus, to twice the rate of deaths and injuries.

Maybe if the critical half million counterinsurgents were on station, something else would happen and the death rates among the occupiers would go nonlinear (i.e., rise more rapidly) or even saturate as US policymakers seem to hop. But that is in the realm of fantasy.

The major part of the plan in the Commander's Initial Assessment seems to have been to raise the number of Afghan soldiers and police by a factor of 4 or more (to 400000). Therein lies the rotten core of the US effort at a policy (much less a strategy), i.e., the Petraeus doctrine, for Afghanistan.

As McChrystal, himself, has pointed out, the Afghans are not joining up in great numbers; on the other hand, it seems as if US policymakers have not noticed (but the rest of us, including US soldiers in the field, have) that the Afghans are very able fighters. What the US offers these people is simply not satisfactory, and the sooner our leaders understand this (and quit Afghanistan and its neighbors), the better for all concerned.

The appointment of David Petraeus augurs little relief. General McChrystal was in charge of executing the early stages of Petraeus

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