I Got Your Platitudes Right Here Posted by Michael Cohen

So last night my wife and I watched the new Frontline documentary on counter-insurgency in Afghanistan. As others have noted it is fascinating and absolutely a must watch. A few observations that jumped out at me.

I've commented before that General McChrystal is damn good when it comes to media relations, but you really have to watch this show to see it firsthand; he really does mouth COIN platitudes like he's a politician. "It's ambitious but important;" "one step at a time;" "it's enormously complex . .  there will be many frustrations . . . but there is no alternative."

Now I realize that its a documentary and you have some selective editing at work here, but what's really fascinating is that beyond McChrystal every military officer interviewed spouts the same sort of platitudinous rhetoric that is straight out of FM 3-24. General Mayville tells us that ending corruption is a military necessity (why the military would be equipped to solve this problem is less clear); another officer declares "the people are our objective"; another captain declares that the goal is to "connect with the people" so the US troops can work with them; and the Frontline producers do a nice job of highlighting some of the same platitudes being uttered at the CNAS conference over the summer.

But then you see the reality that actual Marines are facing on the ground. I couldn't help but sympathize with one Marine telling a somewhat incredulous Afghan that he should "Tell the Taliban to stay away" because now the US Marines are in Helmand.  Later they show the same soldier browbeating local citizens for not going to a local market that US soldiers have secured and cooperating with US troops. The disconnect between COIN rhetoric and the reality on the ground is sobering and disturbing.

Stephen Walt captures the sense of frustration one gets watching these Marines fighting an enemy they can't see and trying to secure a population that doesn't really trust them:

Watching the footage of U.S. Marines attempting to do the impossible made me admire their dedication and raw courage and resent like hell the strategic myopia that sent them on this fool's errand.

Yup. Beyond that, the most striking element of the documentary was the absolute cascade of lies coming out of the mouths of Pakistani officers and government ministers. Listening to the Pakistani Interior Minister tell Martin Smith that there is no Haqqani group in Pakistan; and listening to a Pakistan Army spokesman declare that Mullah Omar is no longer in Quetta was beyond sobering - it was maddening. It also make this Washington Post editorial yesterday about how the US can't leave Afghanistan because it will convince the Pakistan government to give up the fight against the Taliban even more bizarre. They're not fighting them now!

Anyway, watch the whole thing here; it's great.

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I Got Your Platitudes Right Here

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Your reaction to the Frontline piece could not have been closer to my own. The unbelievable message issued by top brass on down is astonishing, such that the almost embarrassingly lofty speech delivered by the commander to his troops in the documentary, a cross between Henry’s Saint Crispin’s Day and one in Shindler’s List prior to the action against the ghetto, free of irony, underlines the sense of the surreal that the brass have assumed toward their ridiculous mission.

This lost and wasteful mission in Afghanistan is an insult to the men in this documentary who it is clear when watched in close up do not believe the obligatory rhetoric they’re supplying to countenance their jobs. This may be sad, but frightening is the notion that the policy makers may actually believe their current strategy and tactics are sound and can successfully accomplish their battle objectives. When they fail, their reaction will never be with a fault of their choices, but instead they will stand like dyed in the wool communists claiming communism never failed because real communism was never tried or their leaders were weak, short sighted or surrendered to expediency.

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