#WINNING in Afghanistan
Will Keola Thomas – Afghanistan Study Group
Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings on the parallels between the PR campaign of a self-destructive major drug-consuming Hollywood star and General Petraeus’ publicity tour for a self-destructive policy in major drug-producing Afghanistan:
“This is the Charlie Sheen counterinsurgency strategy. Which is to give exclusive interviews to every major network saying you’re winning and hope the U.S. public actually agrees with you.”
But the public isn’t buying the spin in either case…
…and both parties need to admit they have a problem and seek help.
Nearly two-thirds of Americans now believe that the war in Afghanistan is no longer worth fighting and close to three-quarters say Obama should withdraw a “substantial number” of combat troops this summer according to a new Washington Post / ABC News poll.
These figures show the highest level of public disapproval yet for the U.S. strategy in Afghanistan. They were released the same day that Gen. Petraeus traveled to Capitol Hill to testify in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee on his first nine months in charge of the war.
One would think that such overwhelming evidence of their constituents’ opposition to the war would prod the senators on the committee into asking some tough questions about the Pentagon’s claims of success. But in four hours of testimony the senators failed to push back on any of the assertions of progress being made in the stacks of pie charts and bar graphs handed out by Petraeus’ staff. For all the accolades and slow pitch questions tossed his way, the general might well have mistaken the senate hearing for softball practice. Here’s the link to the C-Span video: http://www.c-spanarchives.org/videoLibrary/event.php?id=191964 . Don’t watch it while operating heavy machinery.
Petraeus’ mantra of “significant” and yet “fragile and reversible” progress was apparently enough to lull his audience into complacency. When it came time to discuss the number of troops that would be brought home in accordance with the July deadline, Petraeus got away with saying he hadn’t decided yet. When senators referenced the new poll numbers showing the American public’s increasing disagreement with the war it was only to tee-up a canned clarification from Petraeus as to “why we fight.”
For his part, Senator Lieberman (I-Conn.) attributed the ongoing decline in public support to the sorry state of the American economy rather than disapproval of the war itself. (Psst…Hey Joe, there’s a connection.)
Sen. Lieberman: “we have to remind the American people why we are in Afghanistan, why it’s worth it, and that we are succeeding.”
If Sen. Lieberman wants to convince the American public that the current strategy is succeeding he would do well to direct their attention away from the testimony given by senior U.S. intelligence officials in front of the same Armed Services Committee just last week. The stories don’t jibe:
Gen. Petraeus: “The momentum achieved by the Taliban in Afghanistan since 2005 has been arrested in much of the country and reversed in a number of important areas.”
Lt. Gen. Ronald Burgess (Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency): “The Taliban in the south have shown resilience and still influence much of the population…in the east, the Taliban and Haqqani network have suffered numerous tactical and leadership losses with no apparent degradation in their capacity to fight.”
Charlie Sheen: “Winning!”
So far the Petraeus/Sheen approach to strategic communications has worked, at least inside the Beltway. Gen. Petraeus has long recognized that the hearts and minds on Capitol Hill were far more important than any that could be won in Kandahar or Helmand. As Michael Hastings noted in his Rolling Stone profile of Petraeus from February:
“One lesson he learned during the surge in Iraq is that it’s not what’s happening on the battlefield that counts – it’s what people in Washington think is happening. As Petraeus wrote in The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam, his 1987 doctoral dissertation at Princeton, ‘What policymakers believe to have taken place in any particular case is what matters – more than what actually occurred.’ Success lies in finding the right metrics, telling the right story, convincing the right people we’re not losing. The key to victory, Petraeus concluded, is ‘perception.’”
But not all policymakers are reciting the mantra of “winning” while ignoring the demands of the American public. Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, for one, doesn’t need a general to tell him which way the political winds are blowing.
On Tuesday Gov. Barbour broke with his rivals in the Republican presidential primary by suggesting that the U.S. should reduce its presence in Afghanistan while speaking with reporters in Iowa:
“‘I think we need to look at that,’ he said when asked if the U.S. should scale back its presence… ‘What is our mission?’ Barbour said. ‘How many Al Qaeda are in Afghanistan. … Is that a 100,000-man Army mission?’”
With three-quarters of the American public calling for a substantial withdrawal of combat troops this summer and no other leading presidential candidates (let alone the candidate currently in the White House) listening to their demands, Gov. Barbour might be the one #winning in 2012.
