General Stanley McChrystal to resign if he doesn’t get more resources for Afghanistan

As Obama continues to ignore Stanley McChrystal’s requests for more troops Afghanistan, and McChrystal grows more and more frustrated, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn’t given sufficient resources (read “troops”) to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan, according to the Long War Journal. Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn’t ready for it. This also comes on the heels of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton push back of McChrystal. More from McClatchy:

In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion “premature.” Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that “time is not on our side”; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public “to take a deep breath.”

The White House didn’t respond to requests for comment. Officials willing to speak did so only on the condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.

In Kabul, some members of McChrystal’s staff said they don’t understand why Obama called Afghanistan a “war of necessity” but still hasn’t given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly.

Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he’d stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.

“Yes, he’ll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far,” a senior official in Kabul said. “He’ll hold his ground. He’s not going to bend to political pressure.”

On Thursday, Gates danced around the question of when the administration would be ready to receive McChrystal’s request, which was completed in late August. “We’re working through the process by which we want that submitted,” he said.

There now are 62,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan; the rest of the additional troops Obama ordered are expected to arrive by November, bringing the total to 68,000.

Violence is at its highest levels of the war as the resurgent Taliban take over more of the country. Since Obama took office, 197 U.S. service members have been killed in Afghanistan, as of Friday. In August, 2009 became the deadliest year of the nearly eight-year war for American troops. So far, at least 25 have been killed this month.

A troop increase appeared likely earlier this month. Gates, who’d cautioned against sending too many troops to Afghanistan out of fear that Afghans would view the U.S. as an occupying power similar to the Soviet Union, began to distinguish between the “size of the footprint” and the “behavior of those troops and their attitudes and their interactions with the Afghans.”

Mullen said Tuesday on Capitol Hill that the United States “probably” would send more troops. By Thursday, however, Gates was calling for more time, and in an interview with CNN, Vice President Joe Biden said it was “premature” to assume that more troops would be sent to Afghanistan.

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September 22, 2009 · Filed Under Afghanistan


Comments

  • http://www.abundantace.com/ ace

    Why doesn’t McChrystal resign NOW. Same applies to EVERYONE in the military. Every single soldier in the military NEEDS to resign. These soldiers need to say NO to giving citizens the poison [soul condemning] swine flu shots and say NO to the NWO fags.

    If people would just seriously WAKE THE HELL UP NOW, the NWO can be DEFEATED. There is STRENGTH in numbers.