Removing McKiernan in Afghanistan

Washington Post:

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Gates and Mullen had been having doubts about McKiernan since the beginning of the year. They regarded him as too languid, too old-school and too removed from Washington. He lacked the charisma and political savvy that Gen. David H. Petraeus brought to the Iraq war.

McKiernan's answers that day were the tipping point for Mullen. Soon after, he discussed the matter with Gates, who had come to the same conclusion.

Mullen traveled to Kabul in April to confront McKiernan. The chairman hoped the commander would opt to save face and retire, but he refused. Not only had he not disobeyed orders, he believed he was doing what Gates and Mullen wanted.

You're going to have to fire me, he told Mullen.

Two weeks later, Gates did. It was the first sacking of a wartime theater commander since President Harry S. Truman dismissed Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951 for opposing his Korean War policy.

The humiliating removal of a four-star general for being too conventional reveals the ferocious intensity Gates and Mullen share over a growing war that will soon enter its ninth year. It also demonstrates their zeal to respond to President Obama's demand for rapid success in a place where foreign armies have failed for centuries.

"There are those who would have waited six more months" in order to have a less abrupt transition, Mullen said in an interview. "I couldn't. I'm losing kids and I couldn't sleep at night. I have an unbounded sense of urgency to get this right."

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McKiernan is an understated and reticent man; his 37-year career involved more than two decades of overseas deployments but less than a year at the Pentagon. He did not fawn over visiting lawmakers like Petraeus did in Iraq. He also did not cultivate particularly strong relationships with Afghan leaders. His replacement, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, is regarded as a leader in the Petraeus mold: able to nimbly run the troops on the ground as well as the traps in Washington.

"Blame General Petraeus," a senior Defense Department official said. "He redefined during his tour in Iraq what it means to be a commanding general. He broke the mold. The traditional responsibilities were not enough anymore. You had to be adroit at international politics. You had to be a skilled diplomat. You had to be savvy with the press, and you had to be a really sophisticated leader of a large organization. When you judge McKiernan by Petraeus's standards, he looked old-school by comparison."

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The reason this is important is that the enemy cannot defeat us in Afghanistan. The only we we lose this war is in Washington. The general in charge has to be able to convince Washington that we can and should stay and defeat the enemy. That is what Petraeus did in Iraq against longer odds. His willingness to engage with the media and the politicians made as big a difference as the new counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.

There is much more in this long story that covers five internet pages. I think one of McKiernan's other weaknesses was in ceding the media battle space to the Taliban. The Taliban strategy was pretty transparent. It liked to use human shields and then blame the US for the deaths. We always seemed to be on the defensive on the issue and rarely blamed the Taliban for their violations of the Geneva Conventions. I am not sure McChrystal's postion that involves restrictive rules of operations is much better.

While there have been some new attempts to engage the Taliban in the media battle space, we should not allow their tactics to restrict our operations. We still have to destroy this enemy.