It is not military insubordination that lies behind US failure in Afghanistan; it is the military's control of strategy, writes Graham Usher in New York America's losing war in Afghanistan lost its main military strategist on 23 June, when Barack Obama fired General Stanley McChrystal, chief United States and NATO Commander in Afghanistan. The General and his aides had made disparaging comments about the president and other civilian US leaders in Rolling Stone magazine. McChrystal was replaced by his boss and mentor, General David Petraeus, ex-head of the US Central Command and the man whose "surge" strategy in Iraq in 2007 is credited in Washington with turning round another losing war. The White House hopes he will do the same in Afghanistan. The quick-fire appointment signalled "a change in personnel, but not a change in policy", assured Obama, anxious to soothe foreign and Afghan allies and an American public jittery over a war that seems to go only from bad to worse. The handover is unlikely to reassure anyone, save perhaps the Taliban, who described Obama's firing of McChrystal as a "political defeat" for American policies in Afghanistan. It's surely that. And the timing could not have been worse. Eighty US and NATO soldiers have been killed so far in June, the deadliest month since foreign armies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001. And five months into a campaign in Marjah, 15,000 NATO troops have yet to wrest the small farming district from the hands of around 200 Taliban fighters. Afghan governance there has been marked only in the absence. It is failure to take Marjah that has caused the delay of the bigger offensive against Kandahar, heartland of the insurgency and the recapture of which is deemed vital if the US is to "break the momentum of the Taliban", says Obama. "Surge", "governance", "momentum" and "heartland" are keywords from the McChrystal manual. They were taken more or less wholesale from the counterinsurgency strategy Petraeus pursued in Iraq and embraced less than enthusiastically by Obama after a four-month review of Afghan policy last year. He finally dispatched 30,000 more US troops to give them teeth. They are all failing. Yet it is the animus in military-civil relations revealed by McChrystal and his aides in the Rolling Stone article that has most shocked American opinion. One refers to National Security adviser James Jones as a "clown". McChrystal feigns to have never heard of Vice-President Joe Biden, chief domestic critic of the surge strategy. More damaging, McChrystal suggests Obama is "uncomfortable and intimidated" in his presence and "didn't seem very engaged" with Afghanistan when they met for a key Oval office meeting last year. He describes Obama's long review of Afghan policy as "painful", making little difference to his views on strategy. In fact, many observers think McChrystal leaked to The Washington Post a demand for 30,000-50,000 extra troops precisely to bounce the president into a decision he was reluctant to take. Such actions may not be insubordination. But they clearly represented a challenge to the president, who, in the US system, is also commander- in-chief. With the Rolling Stone debacle, Obama was left with little choice. McChrystal's conduct "undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system," he said. Yet the president has placed strategy back in the hands of a general. And for many it is the failing military strategy -- the brainchild of Petraeus even more than McChrystal -- that lies at the heart of US and NATO woes in Afghanistan. Like McChrystal, Petraeus is opposed to political negotiations with the Taliban. He believes an influx of foreign forces is necessary to build up an indigenous police and army so that a future, US-backed Afghan government can negotiate from strength. The problem is that it is the Taliban -- and not the Afghan government -- that is strong in Afghanistan. There is little belief the existing Afghan police and army -- sectarian, corrupt, predatory -- can be reformed. Several European states in NATO are urging negotiations with the Taliban sooner rather than later; so is Afghan President Hamid Karzai. He is also acting on it. Last month Karzai fired his Interior Minister Hanif Atmar and Intelligence chief Amrullah Saleh. The ostensible reason was failure to protect a peace jirga in Kabul from rocket attack. The probable one is both men were opposed to Karzai's power sharing overtures to Taliban and their backers in the Pakistan military. Atmar and Saleh were seen by the Americans as architects of an anti-Taliban Afghan army and police force. Petraeus is also against the withdrawal of US troops from Afghanistan, set to start in July 2011 according to a timetable announced by Obama last year. Rather -- say sources -- he may lobby for extra troops to shore up an Afghan government and army that are unable to stand alone. This might make sense militarily. But it is political suicide. Already opinion polls show 53 per cent of Americans thinking the Afghan war "not worth fighting" and 39 per cent convinced the US is losing. The percentages grow with every US casualty. They will soar if critics like Biden renounce an alternative political strategy to militarism based on a stripped down US presence in Afghanistan, a firm deadline for withdrawal and support for negotiations with the Taliban. It remains to be seen how Obama will deal with the political questions raised by McChrystal's sacking but suppressed by his swift replacement. But they cannot be ducked forever. When will he lay down a timeline for withdrawal? And under what conditions will he negotiate with the Taliban?
