Speaking at the annual meeting of the International Peace Operations Association, a governing body for private military contractors earlier this week, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni, former head of CENTCOM and current chairman of BAE Systems Inc. said that he doesn’t think that the case for the war in Afghanistan has properly been made to the American people. “I’m still waiting for the fireside chat,” he said, adding that the case has to be made not only to the American people, but to NATO allies, as well.
“This can’t be America’s war, this has to be internationalized,” he continued, adding that the fight in Afghanistan “ought to be a question of defining NATO,” and what kind of security organization it is, if some NATO allies will deploy their troops but not allow them to engage in combat. “If they don’t want to fight then we might have to look at what other alliances make sense” in order to provide a true military alliance.
Zinni also touched on the difficult issue of civilian agencies and private groups doing reconstruction work in a combat zone, without adequate security to back them up. “If you don’t secure the area, you can’t do anything else” he said, predicting that in Afghanistan, creating adequate security will be a three to five year project. Zinni’s views on stability operations, as well as humanitarian and reconstruction efforts carry significant weight, given his experience in such work during Operation Provide Comfort in Turkey and northern Iraq in the early 1990s, Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, and other humanitarian missions in the Philippines and elsewhere. The general didn’t exactly strike a hopeful note when it comes to civilian agencies being able to work in an environment like Afghanistan, bluntly stating “let’s own up and give it to the military.” He expressed hope that the Pentagon will stand up a Civil Affairs command to try and coordinate such work, but warned that “we have a long way to go before we get to real integration of civil and military actions,” comparing the difficulties of operating in such a joint manner to the headaches the American military experienced when the services first started to move toward joint operations in the 1990s.
The Thunder Run has linked to this post in the blog post From the Front: 10/30/2009 News and Personal dispatches from the front and the home front.
Posted by: David M | October 30, 2009 at 10:54 AM