McChrystal has been summoned to Washington shortly after apologizing for his and his staff’s remarks. While he’s not openly pulling a MacArthur, is this enough to shitcan him?
This, the corruption and instability of Karzai, the playing-down of any expectations for the coming operation in/near Kandahar, and the recent confirmation of the July 2011 start date for troop withdrawals seems to suggest Afghanistan is circling the drain once more.
I don’t see how he can not resign after those wild remarks. Of course, he’s the guy Gates and Obama picked to run things in Afghanistan, so it certainly reflects poorly on the administration. But it certainly seems like he knew he was committing career suicide, and one has to ask: to what end?
And is if the country wasn’t growing weary of the whole situation in Afghanistan…
I don’t know how many strikes he gets. It was bad enough to try to make the case for more troops through the media, this is intolerable. I say stick him on latrine duty.
We’re reading an article about an article, but: some of the worst comments were made by McChrystal’s aides, and for the most part it really just sounds like guys griping about work. But it’s very bad judgment from him and them, and Obama hates it when shit like this appears in the press. He ordered his people to stop cooperating with profile stories after a piece about Rahm Emanuel included some really minor stuff about personal differences between Emanuel and some other cabinet or staff member. I remember reading recently, I think in the New York Times, that McChrystal never got the hang of dealing with politicians and the public the way Petraeus and other generals did, which has caused him some problems in the past. It looks like that is biting him in the ass again.
Either that or he simply didn’t consider that off-hours grumblings about the boss would be quoted in a news article. That’s still stupid, but doesn’t necessarily indicate an accurate view of his opinion of the President or the other people mentioned. People grumble when they don’t get their way or when they’re stressed, if it’s after work, their in private with their friends, or when they’ve had one too many. They might do so even when they respect the people they are grumbling about simply because that’s how humans let off steam.
In a Republic, the military must be absolutely, completely subservient to the elected leadership. Otherwise, it eventually starts getting the idea that it can make policy - and disaster ensues. The only acceptable response to the civilian government’s policies (at least, in public view) is “yes, sir.”
MSNBC is reporting that the reporter from RS who wrote the article got stuck in Europe with McChrystal’s aids when the volcano shut down air traffic in Europe. A 2-day interview turned into a month excursion, and the reporter ended up being part of a lot more conversations than had originally planned.
But they also say (and I don’t know if they really know this) that there is no way the aids would express opinions that were not in line with McChrystal. The team is just too tight.
He may deserve to get fired, but isn’t this is a little hyperbolic? According to the Times, there are no serious policy disagreements in the Rolling Stone article. There’s some complaining about personalities. To be honest that stuff is less important than how he’s doing his job. If Obama is satisfied with his performance in Afghanistan I don’t know if it makes sense to fire him over this. We’ll see, because I don’t know how similar situations have been handled in the past. Perhaps the idea is to give McChrystal a long flight to Afghanistan to think about what he said, tear him a new one in the Oval Office, and then give him a long flight back to Afghanistan to think about the presidential reaming.
Succesful theatre commanders know how to play the political game and how to gain intra-administration allies who’ll get word to the CinC and the NSC that things are going pear-shaped and we need to do something different. Interviews in Rolling Stone are NOT how you do that. And they make sure their staff knows that loose lips sink ships… and careers.
Even when blowing off steam over an issue, there are right ways and wrong ways – you don’t call higher-ups “clowns” in front of an outsider, however comfortable you are with the outsider. You say “Sometimes it seems we have a hard time getting through to each other” or something like that.
(bolding and underlining mine) In private, of course, it is your duty to tell the higher authority frankly and without pulling any punches what is right, what is wrong, what you can and cannot do, and what happens if the orders come down. If you cannot countenance a smart “yes sir” and your fullest best effort, the honorable thing to do is to respectfully request to be relieved; if you wish to go public with your objections, announce your retirement or resignation.
Yea, that’s what makes it really weird. At the end of the day, while Obama seems somewhat skeptical of McChrystal’s plan, he decided to support it over the various alternatives that were offered, and his press secretary has been playing it up and saying it has a good chance of working.
Antagonizing the Administration in the midst of a serious policy disagreement, while wrong, would at least be somewhat understandable. Doing so while they support your plan for military operations that the public is at best lukewarm about just seems stupid.
I just read the article, Mc Crystal doesn’t really say anything bad about the administration but as pointed out above his aides do. That violates article 88 of the UCMJ. I think he’s done, he’ll resign/retire as a result.
Yep, still his responsibility. If not it would be all too easy to have aides “leak” stuff and just shrug your shoulders saying it isn’t your fault.
Besides, I have to wonder how his aides till this point manage to be tight-lipped and then all of a sudden get chatty. Could happen I suppose, stuck in an airport getting drunk with a savvy reporter pumping you but still…seems suspicious to me.
I wonder if the staff will face UCMJ charges. Maj. Gen. Mayville, quoted in the article (nothing inflamatory), was my bde commander in Iraq and an outstanding officer … I’m glad he’s unlikely to get caught up in it.
I think McChrystal will hang in for awhile, but you’ll probably see his top staff cleaned out. Then, over time, a replacement will gradually brought up to speed. McChrystal will be out, but slowly and carefully, to defuse any “changing midstream” challenges. In fact, I don’t expect it’d happen before next year, at least.
Eh - reasonable people could disagree on this, but no, I don’t believe I was being hyperbolic. History is littered with the corpses of democracies whose militaries gradually developed and expressed their views more and more forcefully, until eventually they decided they’d really rather be giving order than taking them.
Is it likely that the stuff in the Rolling Stone article could set us down that dangerous slope? No, not really. But the way you ensure that the military remains subservient to civilian authority is to slap it down, hard, whenever it starts to stray. Every single time, without exception.
Hope they never get stuck at the airport bar with a member of the Iranian secret service.
FWIW, I suspect McChrystal will get some type of formal rebuke, but not get the boot. They’ve been building up to the upcoming operation in Southern Afghanistan for months, kicking the guy in charge mid-stream will probably be more problematic then its worth.