TEN YEARS AFTER the US began its war on Afghanistan, it still doesn’t know how to bring the conflict to a successful resolution, according to retired US Army General Stanley McChrystal.
Speaking at the Council on Foreign Relations, McChrystal said that US went into the war with too little knowledge of Afghan culture and with “a very superficial understanding of the situation and history”.
The retired commander had led coalition forces in 2009 and 2010, but was forced to resign after a Rolling Stone interview in which he was quoted mocking President Obama and Vice President Joe Biden. A Pentagon investigation subsequently cleared McChrystal of all wrongdoing, saying that “not all of the events at issue occurred as reported in the article”. The magazine said it was standing by the article.
McChrystal also said that President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq two years into the Afghan conflict complicated the situation because the invasion “changed the Muslim world’s view of America’s effort”.
“When we went after the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, there was a certain understanding that we had the ability and the right to defend ourselves and the fact that al-Qaeda had been harboured by the Taliban was legitimate,” he said. However, the Iraq invasion was seen as “less legitimate” in the Muslim world.
McChrystal also said that the US and its NATO allies are only slightly over halfway into reaching their goals in Afghanistan.
- Additional reporting by the AP
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