Reviewing Obama’s War: Part I
This weekend I finally managed to have the time to sit down and watch this excellent PBS Frontline documentary called Obama’s War. Highly recommended and hats off to the folks at Frontline for a very good piece of work on an extremely important topic. I’m going to do a number of posts all branching out of this doc this week. One of the key strengths of this film is that it gets some very big name folks on all sides of this issue.
As Andrew Exum (who by the way has the greatest avatar in the blogosphere), one of the ones interviewed put it:
John Nagl, Bill Mayville and Stan McChrystal make a good argument for a counterinsurgency campaign, while Andrew Bacevich and an especially pithy Celeste Ward make a good argument against pursuing such a campaign. All sides, in other words, acquit themselves rather well. All sides, that is, save for the Pakistani officials.
Digging deeper into the Frontline site, there is a page with transcripts from all the interviewers. There are a whole mess of them, but the best ones in my opinion are Steve Coll, Andrew Bacevich, John Nagl-Andrew Exum, and Rory Stewart.
Nagl, Exum, and McChyrstal are on the side of a full counterinsurgency (COIN) operation in Afghanistan following their work in Iraq, predicated on clearing insurgents, holding territory, and building infrastructure policy so that a central government might come into take over, thereby allowing a natural exit of US/NATO/ISAF forces.
Stewart and Bacevich, for various differing reasons, stand opposed to such a position.
While Steve Coll represents something of an in-between point of view.
So I’ll start with Coll. His interview is here. Coll has the best understanding of the history of Afghanistan, and as a guy with a history degree, I think it’s the best place to start. [Read more →]
October 19, 2009 1 Comment
