Stanley McChrystal’s Long War

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Afghanistan-t.html?_r=1&scp=2&sq=McChrystal&st=cse

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: barry levine 
Date: Mon, Oct 19, 2009 at 5:27 PM
Subject: re: Stanley McChrystal’s Long War
To: letters@nytimes.com

To the Editor:

     If we are to model our strategy in Afghanistan on our strategy in Iraq, we will have to understand Iraq. We got in there with an ever-changing causus belli, and we are aiming at an ever-changing definition of "success".  The Petraeus strategy did reduce the daily deathtoll, but did so by empowering and arming sectarian militias. These groups will not willingly cede their power to the central government were the U.S. to leave. The result is an Iraq permanently poised for civil war if and when the U. S. forces go home. If this is the model for our strategy in Afghanistan, we are going to need to find a few trillion dollars to sustain our occupation over the coming decades and will need to recruit or draft a few hundred thousand soldiers to carry it out.

Barry Levine