http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/shifti...ation_20100803/
The first decision made by Gen. David Petraeus, the successor to Gen. Stanley McChrystal as commandant of international forces in Afghanistan, has been to abandon the policy he himself drafted in order to win the war and rebuild Afghan stability and government.
He has done so because it has not worked. It has failed to "clear" Taliban guerrilla forces from the areas taken by international security troops. The guerrillas leave when the foreign troops launch an offensive. They inflict casualties on the invaders as they go, leaving behind mines, roadside bombs, booby-trapped roads and houses, intending to harm apprehensive peasants and townspeople as well, who know that the Taliban will eventually return, and that those Afghans who have collaborated with the foreigners will be punished or killed.
The prospect of giving Afghanistan a functioning and competent democratic government and a new army capable and willing to defend its countrymen is slight. Such was what the counterinsurgency doctrine drafted by Petraeus was supposed to do. It was based on past efforts by America and its allies to re-establish order and good government in revolutionary or war-ravaged societies. The policy has rarely succeeded, but is now, or at least briefly was, standard operating procedure, as set forth in the Army Field Manual that Petraeus wrote.
Minimize artillery use, rockets and airstrikes to spare civilians, even when this makes the troops angry because they believe they are put at risk. Win hearts and minds; drive away the guerrilla activists; establish good government for the rest.
A new policy was made known in Kabul last weekend. It is selective assassination, "targeted killings" of Taliban leaders, making use of airstrikes and drones, the latter often controlled from bases in the United States, plus midnight raids and snatch missions by helicopter-borne special operations troops. Leaders of the insurgency are targeted. U.S. military sources in Afghanistan say they now have evidence that Taliban fighters are reluctant to be promoted to leadership posts out of fear of being made the target of these "personalized" American killings.
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