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My Share of the Task(273)

By:General Stanley McChrystal


                an insurgency soon gestated: A description of the Taliban’s reinfiltration between 2002 and 2006 can be found in chapter 4 of Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 97–145.

                waged blanket assassination campaigns: Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 102.

                whom we paid handsomely: Ahmed Rashid, “How Obama Lost Karzai,” Foreign Policy (March/April 2011).

                swift courts: Giustozzi, Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop, 111.

                “shadow governors”: International Security Assistance Force (Major General Michael T. Flynn), “State of the Insurgency: Trends, Intentions and Objectives (Unclassified),” December 22, 2009.

                More Americans: Michael O’Halon and Ian S. Livingston, “Afghanistan Index,” Brookings Institution, March 31, 2012, 11.

                more Afghan civilians: “Afghanistan: Annual Report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict, 2008,” United Nations Assistance Mission to Afghanistan, January 2009, 7.

                four times as many: In 2007, insurgents laid 2,700 IEDs. In 2008, that number rose to 4,169. ISAF (Flynn), “State of the Insurgency,” 2009.

                requested additional forces: On September 22, the New York Times reported: “Last week, Gen. David D. McKiernan, the top American commander in Afghanistan, said he needed as many as 15,000 combat and support troops beyond the 8,000 additional troops that Mr. Bush had recently approved for deployment early next year. The general’s announcement came after he sent his request to the Pentagon; it has not yet been acted on.” Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Bush Administration Reviews Its Afghanistan Policy, Exposing Points of Contention,” New York Times, September 22, 2008.

                by 50 percent: The New York Times estimates there were 36,600 troops in Afghanistan that month. Hannah Fairfield et al., “Troop Levels in Afghanistan Since 2001,” New York Times, October 1, 2009.

                “disrupt, dismantle, and defeat”: “White Paper of the Interagency Policy Group’s Report on U.S. Policy toward Afghanistan and Pakistan,” White House website, March 2009, 2.

                “take the lead”: Ibid.

                “I knew wherever I was”: William Tecumseh Sherman, Memoirs of General William T. Sherman (Library of America, 1990), 428.

                “In Afghanistan, despite impressive progress”: “Hearing to consider the nominations of Admiral James G. Stavridis, USN for reappointment to the grade of Admiral and to be Commander, U.S. European Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe; Lieutenant General Douglas M. Fraser, USAF to be General and Commander, U.S. Southern Command; and Lieutenant General Stanley A. McChrystal, USA to be General and Commander, International Security Assistance Forces, Afghanistan,” Senate Armed Services Committee, June 2, 2009, 10.

                “we must succeed”: Ibid.

                killed the vast majority: According to the U.N., 2,118 Afghan civilians died from conflict in 2008, up from 1,523 in 2007. Of those killed in 2008, 55 percent were killed by the Taliban or their sympathizers and 39 percent by pro-government elements. “Report on the Protection of Civilians (2008),” UNAMA, January 2009, 14.

                the gunfight subsided: U.S. Central Command, “USCENTCOM Unclassified Executive Summary: U.S. Central Command Investigation into Civilian Casualties in Farah Province, Afghanistan on 4 May 2009,” June 18, 2009, 6. CENTCOM estimated the strikes killed seventy-eight Taliban (ibid., 11).

                to evacuate two wounded: Ibid., 7.