McMasters on Afghanistan

One of the most impressive officers I've met in recent years is Major General H.R. McMasters.  I worked with him briefly while he was at U.S. Army TRADOC, and even more briefly when he headed the Task Force Shaffiyat in Afghanistan.  Fellow officers who had him as their tactical officer at West Point raved about him, and his book Dereliction of Duty is one of the rare books that becomes zeitgeisty in military literary circles that actually lives up to the hype.  He speaks with infectious enthusiasm on the driest of topics, from obscure Army doctrine debates to the origins of criminal patronage networks in Afghanistan.

This weekend the Wall Street Journal published a great interview by David Feith with MG H.R. McMasters on the war in Afghanistan.  "Our soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors, working alongside Afghanistan, have shut down the vast majority of the physical space in which the enemy can operate," McMasters says.  "The question is, how do we consolidate those gains politically and psychologically."

McMasters goes on to argue that the fundamental reason the Taliban collapsed so quickly in 2001 was "that every Afghan was convinced of the inevitability of the Taliban's defeat."  Unfortunately, I think that although the Strategic Partnership Agreement signed last week (which MG McMasters says is "immensely important") is a positive step, its complete absence of specifics, especially with regards to the future funding of the Afghan National Security Forces, risks undermining the psychological gains intended to sway those Afghans still sitting on the fence between supporting the government or the Taliban.

As they say, the entire feature is worth perusing.