Costs of War: Changing Command

The sudden and very public external pagefiringcall_made of General David McKiernan as head of US and NATO military forces in Afghanistan came at a hastily arranged press conference at the Pentagon on Monday.

“We have a new policy set by our new president. We have a new strategy, a new mission, and a new ambassador. I believe that new military leadership also is needed,” Gates told reporters.

Questioned repeatedly about the reasons behind the decision, he declined to elaborate. “Nothing went wrong, and there was nothing specific. It simply was my conviction … that a fresh approach, a fresh look in the context of the new strategy probably was in our best interest.”

In anonymous interviews with reporters, defense officials are portraying McKiernan - who headed US forces in Iraq during the early years of the occupation there - as too conventional in his approach to one of the most difficult and challenging military campaigns ever waged by the United States.

“The decision reflects a belief that the war in Afghanistan has grown so complex that it needs a commander drawn from the military’s unconventional warfare branch,” external pagewrotecall_made the New York Times’ Elizabeth Bumiller.

Gates returned at the weekend from a trip to Afghanistan to - in his own words - “get a sense from the ground level … what the needs are, what the challenges are, and what the solutions to some of the problems are.”

McKiernan will stay on until former special operations chief General Stanley McChrystal is confirmed by the Senate, Gates said.

Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell told ISN Security Watch that the NATO Council - a body made up of all the foreign ministers of the Atlantic bloc’s member nations - will have to sign off on McChrystal’s appointment as head of NATO forces. Pentagon officials “hope to move ASAP,” said Morrell in an e-mail.

Gates was careful to praise McKiernan’s “decades … of selfless service,” a sentiment echoed by the White House. “This change of direction in Afghanistan in no way diminishes the President’s deep respect for Gen. McKiernan and his decades of public service,” said spokesman Robert Gibbs in a statement.

Nonetheless, Gates made it clear that the general had not been the author of the sudden change in his fortunes. “I have asked for the resignation of General David McKiernan,” the defense secretary said. Asked if McKiernan's removal would mark the end of his military career, Gates replied simply, "Probably."

In a statement, McKiernan, who assumed his command in June 2008, and would normally have been expected to serve 18-24 months, said: “It has been my distinct honor over the past year to serve with the brave men and women from 42 ISAF contributing nations and the Afghan National Security Forces. I have never been prouder to be an American Soldier.”
The high-profile firing was external pagedescribedcall_made by one commentator and counter-insurgency expert as “ruthless.”

Andrew Exum, who blogs as Abu Muqawama, went on to say that the move showed “President Obama, Secretary Gates, and [US Central Command Commander] Gen. [David] Petraeus are as serious as a heart attack about a shift in strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan.”

In addition to the change of command, Pentagon officials let slip last week that they would also appoint a deputy commander in Afghanistan, a three-star general to oversee day-to-day operations and allow the four-star commander to focus of big picture strategy issues. This mirrors the set-up the US military has used in Iraq, but is a new innovation in Afghanistan.

The deputy, Lieutenant-General David Rodriguez, returned six months ago from a tour of duty in Afghanistan where he commanded the 82nd Airborne and headed the US regional command in the east of the country. Senior military officials external pagetoldcall_made the Wall Street Journal last week that his Afghan tenure was seen “as one of the most successful counter-insurgency efforts there since violence began to rise three years ago.”

Most immediate commentary about the change focused on the external pagerecordcall_made of McKiernan’s replacements.

They have “a combined skill set that give us some fresh opportunities looking forward,” Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen said.

McChrystal, currently director of the Joint Staffs at the Pentagon - one of the most senior military positions in Washington - has a long history with US Special Forces, and from September 2003 until August last year led the secretive Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, and was in charge of the special task forces that hunted so-called high-value targets in Iraq and Afghanistan.

He was previously chief of staff for the US coalition commander in Afghanistan 2001-2003, and last month chaired a special task force on Afghan strategy for Mullen.

One senior officer who served with McChrystal in Iraq described him to blogger Spencer Ackerman as “external pagescary smartcall_made,” and counter-insurgency experts like Exum have lauded his experience.

In April 2006, McChrystal was personally congratulated by President George W Bush for the success of one of his special forces teams - known as Task Force 6-26 - in tracking down and killing Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq.

But some have already started raising questions about his record. Task Force 6-26, for instance, ran a secret detention camp at the Baghdad International Airport where detainees were subjected to “enhanced interrogation techniques” that Human Rights Watch external pagesayscall_made constituted torture.

In their report “No Blood, No Foul,” Human Rights Watch external pagedocumentscall_made that McChrystal was a frequent visitor to the camp, and the issue of what he may have known about the techniques his troops were using there is likely to come up at his confirmation hearing.

Another issue likely to be the focus of controversy at the hearing is McChrystal’s role in covering up the fact that Army Ranger Pat Tillman - an American football star who gave up his sports career to join the military after 9/11 - had been killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan, and not by Taliban insurgents, as top officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, claimed.

According to documents from the subsequent investigation external pageobtainedcall_made by the Associated Press, McChrystal told investigators that he signed papers recommending that Tillman get a Silver Star medal, although he had suspected for several days that the ranger might have died by fratricide, rather than enemy fire.

The investigation found that he was "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" contained in the citation. The Army overruled a Pentagon recommendation that he be disciplined, external pagereportedlycall_made “because he tried to alert his chain of command that Tillman may have been killed by friendly fire.”