After McChrystal 麦克里斯特尔离任后

THE national security adviser of the world’s greatest superpower is a “clown”, its vice-president a nobody and its president “uncomfortable and intimidated”. With those words the officers around General Stanley McChrystal, the American commander in Afghanistan, engulfed America in a storm as damaging to its war effort as any Taliban raid. America rightly sets great store by civilian control of its armed forces and on June 23rd a distinctly unintimidated President Barack Obama made General McChrystal pay for his insubordination with his job. But presidential decisiveness cannot conceal a deeper truth. America and its allies are losing in Afghanistan.
世界超级大国的国家安全顾问是一个“小丑”，其副总统是个无名之辈，其总统“令人不安、胆小懦弱”。美国驻阿富汗总司令斯坦利•麦克里斯特尔身边的官员发表的这些话在一场风暴中吞没了美国，这场风暴对其战争的破坏与任何塔利班的突袭不相上下。美国明智地注重平民控制其军事力量，6月23日，显然无所畏惧的奥巴马总统让麦克里斯特尔为其不配合他的工作付出了代价。但是总统的果断无法改变一个更真的事实。美国以及其盟国在阿富汗日渐式微。

Mr Obama had every reason to cashier General McChrystal. Officers, including his predecessor, have gone for less. Not to act could have left the president looking weak. And yet it was a heavy price to pay. Nothing could cheer the Taliban more than seeing General McChrystal out on his ear. He is a master of counterinsurgency (COIN), he was one of the few Americans who could work with President Hamid Karzai and his hand-picked commanding officers are in charge of a forthcoming operation in Kandahar that will probably determine the course of the campaign (see article). To Mr Obama’s credit, his place has been filled by General David Petraeus, the star of the war in Iraq and the man who wrote the manual on COIN. Even so, the dismissal leaves America’s campaign pitched on the edge of failure.

奥巴马先生有充分的理由罢免麦克里斯特尔将军。其他官员，包括他的前任司令，没犯这么严重的错误就被解职了。不采取行动可能让总统显得软弱。但是这样做会付出沉重的代价。对塔利班来说，没有什么比让麦克里斯特尔将军被调离更令人振奋了。他是反叛乱的良将，是美国人当中为数不多能与哈米德•卡尔扎伊一起共事的美国人之一以及其亲手挑选的指挥官将在坎大哈指挥即将到来的军事行动，这次行动将可能决定战争的走向。奥巴马值得赞赏的是，他的位置由的戴维•彼得雷乌斯将军取代，他是伊拉克战争的明星并撰写了反叛乱技能手册的草稿。即便如此，这次罢免可能使美国的阿富汗战争处于失败的边缘。
Mr Obama once described the fighting in Afghanistan as “a war of necessity”. The president must now put necessity aside and pose two fundamental questions. Can the American-led coalition still win in Afghanistan? And if so, how?
奥巴马先生曾经把在阿富汗的战斗描述成“一场必要的战争”。现在总统必须将必要性放在一边，提出两个基本问题。美国领导的联盟能在阿富汗获胜吗？如果能，该怎么做？

Kabul fighting更多信息请访问：http://www.24en.com/
喀布尔战斗
This is a terrible moment for the generals to fall out with the politicians. In June Afghanistan surpassed Vietnam to become, by some measures, the longest campaign in America’s history. More than 1,000 of its men and women have been killed and almost 6,000 injured. Yet the Taliban are rampant, assassinating tribal leaders and intimidating their people. A survey in 120 districts racked by insurgency, a third of Afghanistan’s total, found little popular support for Mr Karzai. Over a third of their inhabitants backed the insurgents.
这是一个将军们与政客们不和的糟糕时刻。根据一些标准衡量，6月，阿富汗战争超越越南战争成为美国历史上最长的战争。1000多名美国男女军人阵亡，约6000受伤。但是塔利班仍然猖獗，暗杀部族领导，恐吓其平民。对遭叛乱洗劫的120个区——是阿富汗总区数的三分之一——的一项调查发现，卡尔扎伊先生几乎没有什么支持率。这些区内超过三分之一的定居者支持叛乱分子。

Since November, when Mr Obama promised 30,000 more of his country’s soldiers to the campaign, little has gone right. General McChrystal’s plan was for a “surge” that would seize the initiative from the Taliban and create the scope for Afghanistan’s government, backed by its army and police, to take charge. In practice that has not happened. Marja, a farming district in Helmand, was supposed to show how COIN would win over the people and send the Taliban packing. General McChrystal himself now calls Marja a “bleeding ulcer”. Mr Karzai’s supposedly corrupt half-brother was meant to go, but he remains in charge in Kandahar. Fanciful Pentagon talk of Afghanistan’s huge mineral wealth smacks of desperation. America has, perhaps, until the end of the year to show that COIN can work.
  去年11月，奥巴马先生承诺美国将向这次战争增兵3万，自那以后，似乎没有什么事情进展顺利。麦克里斯特尔将军的计划是“增兵”能够从塔利班那里获得主动权，从而为由其军队和警力支持的阿富汗政府接管创造可能性。事实上，并没有如愿以偿。赫尔曼德省的一个农业区马尔贾本想展示反叛乱技能将如何赢得民心从而使塔利班撤离。现在麦克里斯特尔将军自己将马尔贾称为“正在流血的溃疡”。据称，卡尔扎伊腐败的兄弟打算离开，但是他仍然控制着坎大哈。充满幻想的国防部称阿富汗藏有巨大的矿产财富，有点绝望的味道。或许，美国到今年年底才能表明反叛乱技能的效果。

The charitable view is that frustration lay behind the reckless insults dished out by General McChrystal and his team in front of a journalist from Rolling Stone. COIN manuals stress the importance of “unity of effort”: damning the idiots back in Washington does not help. But if the generals have not always done well by the politicians, the politicians have far more often let down the generals. George Bush and his defence chiefs neglected the war in Afghanistan while they devoted themselves to bungling the war in Iraq. Mr Obama and his advisers, at odds over strategy, dithered over allocating troops and, far worse, set a date for them to start their withdrawal (see Lexington).
那种宽厚的观点是，麦克里斯特尔将军及其团队面对《滚石》记者出言不逊的背后是沮丧。反叛乱技能手册强调“一致努力”的重要性：谴责华盛顿后面的愚蠢之人毫无裨益。但是如果政客们认为将军们并不总是表现良好，政客们让将军们失望却要常见得多。乔治•布什及其国防官员忽视阿富汗战争，而将他们自己致力于瞎指挥伊拉克战争。奥巴马和他的顾问在战略上争吵不休，在派遣部队上犹豫不决，更加糟糕的是为他们何时开始撤军设定了一个日期。

This infighting and hesitancy signal a lack of commitment that has drowned out Mr Obama’s warlike rhetoric. That has blighted the war’s chances of success. Too few Afghans and Pakistanis have thrown in their lot with the West, because too many think America has no stomach for the fight.
这种内部斗争和举棋不定表明缺少承诺，它盖过了奥巴马先生充满火药味的言辞。这已经减少了战争成功的机率。很少有阿富汗人和巴基斯坦人与西方同舟共济，因为很多人认为美国并不想作战。

Were so much not at stake, it would be tempting to give up and call the troops home. Yet, although Western leaders have done a poor job at explaining the war in Afghanistan to their voters, a defeat there would be a disaster. The narrow aim of denying al-Qaeda a haven, already frustrated by the terrorists’ scope to lodge in unruly parts of northern Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, would become impossible to achieve. A Western withdrawal would leave Afghanistan vulnerable to a civil war that might suck in the local powers, including Iran, Pakistan, India and Russia. Sooner or later, the poison would end up harming America too: it always does. Defeat in Afghanistan would mark a humiliation for the West, and for NATO, that would give succour to its foes in the world. And do not forget the Afghan people. Having invaded their country, the West has a duty to return it to them in a half-decent state.
要不是很多东西关系重大，放弃作战、召部队回国将很有吸引力。然而，尽管西方领导人在给其选民解释阿富汗战争方面表现不佳，但是如果战败，将是一场灾难。由于恐怖分子的范围在巴基斯坦北部、也门和索马里没有法治的部分地区扎根，让基地组织无处容身的狭隘目标已经被挫败，将成为不可能实现的目标。西方撤兵将极易引发阿富汗内战，这可能使包括伊朗、巴基斯坦、印度和俄罗斯在内的地区国家卷入其中。如果在阿富汗战败，对西方和北约而言都是一种耻辱，却给其世界上的敌人提供了援助。此外，别忘了阿富汗的人民。西方入侵了他们的国家，有责任还他们一个半太平的国家。

It would be idle to harbour such dreams if they were unattainable. Yet, grim as it is, the violence in Afghanistan even now pales beside Iraq at its worst. In the pit of that conflict tens of thousands of people were dying each year, at least ten times more than in Afghanistan today. The ranks of the Afghan army and police force are slowly filling with recruits. There are reasons to think that many Afghans would like to be rid of the Taliban, if only they could believe in an alternative.
如果这样的梦想无法实现，怀揣它们也是徒劳无功。然而，虽然形势严峻，但是现在阿富汗存在的暴力与伊拉克最糟糕的时候相比还是相形见绌。在那场冲突的深沟中，每年有上万人身亡，至少是今天阿富汗的10倍还多。阿富汗军队和警力各级正在缓慢通过征兵得到补充。如果他们能够相信另一种选择的话，有理由相信很多阿富汗人想赶走塔利班。

Still the right plan
计划依然正确

That is where the appointment of General Petraeus comes in. A losing cause does not automatically have to become a lost one: Iraq showed that. The operation in Marja went badly, but putting down an insurgency needs time and lots of troops, preferably local ones. The real test will come in Kandahar. Worryingly, one of General McChrystal’s last acts was to postpone the operation there until the autumn, amid signs that local people were not yet ready to back it. Even so, Mr Obama owes it to the West and to the Afghan people to determine whether COIN can in fact succeed under his best general. The Afghan war may yet end in an ignominious retreat. But nobody should welcome such an outcome.
因此，任命了彼得雷乌斯。一项走向失败的事业并不一定会自然而然地变成一项失败的事业：伊拉克表明了这一点。马尔贾的行动表现糟糕，但是镇压一场叛乱需要时间和众多军队，尤其是当地的军队。坎大哈将是真正的考验。令人担忧的是，麦克里斯特尔将军最后的指令之一就是将那里的行动推迟到秋季，这表明当地的居民还不愿意支持这次行动。即便如此，奥巴马先生认为，在其最优秀的将军的领导下，西方和阿富汗人民决定了反叛乱技能在实践中的成败。然而，阿富汗战争或许会在一场不光彩的撤军中结束。但是不应该有人对这样的结果表示欢迎。