New strategy, new commander
- |
TO JUSTIFY his removal of General David McKiernan as commander of US forces in Afghanistan, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was commendably forthright. The country needs a new approach to the campaign against the Taliban, Gates said, and McKiernan's replacement, Lieutenant General Stanley McChrystal, has the right background for that mission, having been a commander of special operations forces with extensive experience in counterinsurgency warfare.
Still, there is a crucial caveat that Gates and President Obama need to keep in mind as they evaluate the new commanders and their new strategy. McChrystal and the new number two commander in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Rodriguez, must make one tenet in their guerrilla warfare playbook an absolute priority: protection of the civilian population.
The Taliban are reaping benefits from a dynamic that should be familiar from other guerrilla wars. When Taliban fighters stage an ambush, US forces frequently feel compelled to call in air strikes or artillery fire. And all too often, as happened last week, innocent Afghan villagers are hurt or killed.
The inevitable outcome is widespread anger against the foreign army. This is what Afghan President Hamid Karzai lamented again and again last week during a visit to Washington. He begged Americans to stop killing Afghan civilians.
What Karzai knows, and what McChrystal must take to heart, is that nearly all Afghans despise and fear the Taliban. Yet no US strategy can defeat the Taliban unless the foreigners become protectors - not destroyers - of Afghan families.
