What Hastings got wrong in Rolling Stan

Like many Americans, I’ve spent the last few days observing the fallout from General Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone profile with a mix of fascination and perplexity. Facetiously nicknamed “Rolling Stan” and “McClusterfuck” on the Internet, this public relations nightmare blends all the melodrama of reality television with the actual realities of war. Uncouth commentary about superiors? Check. Drunken aides dancing at an Irish pub in Paris? Check. Direct access to the most powerful fighting man in our military? Check. A significant impact on the war effort in Afghanistan? Not quite. There’s no doubt Michael Hastings’ article will go down in the annals of journalistic star-makers, as it effectively ended General McChrystal’s career. However, it seemed clear when reading the article that Hastings also wanted to deride the current counterinsurgency strategy undertaken by military leaders in Afghanistan. President Obama stressed a shift in approach won’t occur when naming General David Petraeus McChrystal’s successor. Nor should it. For all the unsettling, flashy quotes Hastings’ article contained, his cursory analysis and dismissive tone of counterinsurgency (COIN) as a whole diluted an otherwise fascinating profile piece, and offered no feasible alternatives. COIN is never a good option, as Hastings points out – but sometimes, it’s the best option.

Counterinsurgency is a trendy term amongst Defense circles now, but such wasn’t always the case. Back in 2006, before General Petraeus took over command in Iraq, it was actually something of a revolutionary concept at the Pentagon. David Kilcullen, a noted counterinsurgency expert and current U.S. military consultant, describes this era as “a time when misguided leaders banned even the word ‘insurgency,’ though busily losing to one” in the inscription of his new book, Counterinsurgency. While Hastings attempts to portray COIN as a fringe strategy unleashed by a “runaway general,” historical paradigms are in abundance for the approach. The recent tactical (if not strategic) success of Iraq stands out, as do the British “victories” in Malaya and Northern Ireland. (One thing about COIN that the general public still has a hard time grasping: victory isn’t defined by winning, it’s defined by not losing. Don’t like it? Ensure that our political leaders don’t get the military involved in messy, guerilla land wars.) Hastings claims advocates of COIN operate with “a cultish zeal” and writes that “the theory essentially rebrands the military” as some kind of cross between the Green Berets and the Peace Corps. While those quotes certainly pack some pizzazz, they don’t speak to the success or failures of COIN, which is the purpose of military strategy, after all. It’s important that readers of the article understand that Generals Petraeus and McChrystal and their COIN disciples didn’t invent the wheel so much as they updated it for a modern world.

Hastings then trots out quotes from active duty soldiers in Afghanistan who complain about the restraints of COIN, and he infers that the war would go more smoothly if the rules of engagement for these soldiers were eased. Again, don’t hate the player, hate the game – General McChrystal had plenty of reasons, both historical and current, for his obsession with minimizing civilian casualties. France’s epic 1950’s failure in Algeria stands out most prominently in this regard, and we had seven years of cowboy tactics in Afghanistan with very limited success, where we pursued more of a counter-guerilla technique instead of the population-centric COIN now in place. Further, finding a soldier who isn’t angry and complaining in a war zone is about as rare as finding a journalist without an agenda. Combat soldiers will do their duty, and they’ll do it well, but they’re rarely happy about it. My scout platoon and I often complained about the rules of engagement in Iraq during the Surge, but once we got some perspective and time away from the perils of the moment, we better understood the whys of it all. Soldiers are trained to kill, and sometimes will do so even in a COIN environment, but that doesn’t mean they always should. It’s not an ideal solution, and leaves a lot of room for confusion and error, but ambiguity pervades every level of guerilla war, from the tactical to the operational to the strategic.

Vague references to a counter-terror strategy pepper the Rolling Stone article, usually advocated by Vice-President Biden. Again, Hastings does the reader a disservice by suggesting that COIN and counter-terror are mutually exclusive approaches. Anyone who doesn’t think we’re conducting counter-terror in Afghanistan right now, and a few other nations across the globe, is fooling themselves. It’s likely that no one understands this better than General McChrystal, given his background in Special Forces’ black operations. Saying someone is “pro counter-terror” is akin to stating someone is pro-education. That’s swell and all, but who’s going to disagree? There’s a matter of degrees and numbers application, with regards to counter-terror, that Hastings avoids in his piece.

Hastings’ article was provocative, enthralling, and, apparently, accurate. But he overreached with his equating of General McChrystal and counterinsurgency. The article in question won’t change the trajectory of the war, though it has changed the career trajectory of one general and his staff. When President Obama said this was a change in command, and not in strategy, he meant it – General Petraeus literally wrote the COIN manual, and his leadership and planning will certainly resemble, if not mimic, what occurred in Iraq from 2007-08. If there’s a place counterinsurgency can’t and won’t work, it’s Afghanistan; it’s not known as “the graveyard of empires” without reason. It’s definitely not a good option. But, nine years after an invasion without an exit plan, it’s the best one, as we creep towards the July 2011 withdrawal date.