Yeah, it’s on the AP wires. Statement imminent from the President, but looks like Petraeus to take over.
This just in from FOX: Is The President A Thinskinned Weenie Who Can’t Take A Joke?
That’s a shame. McChrystal was by far the best special forces strategist we have. Losing him will hurt us eventually. It may take years to know the impact of losing a guy like this.
I still remember that screwed up mission Carter ordered in Iran. Special Forces are only effective with great leaders and intel.
Yes Obama is thin skinned. He’s not a leader. He’s trying to look like one and it’s a sham.
Depending on how cynical you want to be, I can see a big upside for McChrystal here:
-
Obama backs down, and McChrystal gets to air his grievances and keep his job, while having shifted some or all of the blame for the lack of progress in Afghanistan onto Obama administration officials.
-
McChrystal gets fired, then comes home and parlays all the publicity into speaking engagements, a best-seller book on what’s gone wrong in Afghanistan (and how bravely called out the failures and got cashiered for it), and perhaps even a new political life. In any event, he gets to walk away from Afghanistan while laying the blame for the lack of progress at someone else’s feet.
It’s hard to see a downside for him, assuming he was ready to retire from the military.
None of this excuses his behavior. But maybe it explains his behavior.
On edit: Looks to me like Obama made a smart move.
No “Man on the White Horse” idolatry for Petraeus from you this time, Sam? 
Your listed options, btw:
- Not happening
- Not related to reality
Other than that, though …
bwahahahahahahahahaha.
The sad thing is I was joking. Have you read this thread? It contains many good posts explaining exactly why any C-in-C cannot tolerate this kind of thing, no matter how qualified the person may be.
Frankly, had Obama not let him go, that would be showing weakness.
It might be in the white house, but we are talking about veterans of the Chicago political scene.
Declan
What Boss said … the violation of the UCMJ could not go unchecked … Good order and disciple in our Armed Forces was at stake …
Most of his reputation seems to have stemmed from his successes overseeing Special Forces Ops. I suspect he’s something of a demonstration of the Dilbert Principle. As he got promoted farther and farther away from the thing he made a name for himself in, he seems to have been associated with more and more screw-ups. He got promoted to the level of his own incompetence.
I’m sure he’ll retire to a pretty comfortable life, but I doubt he’s seeing this as a win. He’d put his life into working up the ranks, and by all accounts was pretty invested in the current effort in Afghanistan, which was largely his baby. Having to give up on what would’ve probably been the apex of his career after less then a year due to his inability to get his staff to keep their mouths shut was probably not how he wanted to end his military career.
Plus it would take some pretty good writing to turn “petty snarking at his commanders using anonymous proxys in a Rolling Stone article” to “bravely calling out failures and getting cashierd for it”.
I would have preferred seeing McChrystal reassigned back as a Special Forces commander. They could have done it quietly at the end of the year.
But, Obama has a massive image problem right now. The oil spill has seriously hurt him. Candidates he’s endorsed have lost. Obama is having a tough year. McChrystal 's comments were the final straw. Obama needed to lash out at somebody.
I’m not surprised.
Read the thread. I know, the cognitive dissonance will hurt as you try to reconcile reality with your desire to paint Obama in the worst possible light, but do please give it a try.
[nitpick]
That would be the Peter Principle.
[/nitpick]
Eh, people read Rolling Stone. And there isn’t anyway to “quietly” remove the commander of the Afghanistan war. Now or in a few months, it wouldn’t have made a difference. Plus there’s a major offensive scheduled for the Fall, so now is probably an easier time to switch people out then later.
I seriously doubt Obama is thrilled at having to deal with this. McChrystal was his pick to lead operations in Afghanistan, and he’d backed the General’s strategy during the fairly drawn out policy fight regarding the War earlier in the year. Having to scrub him is hardly a political bonsu, and Afghanistan in general is enough of a drag on his political priorities as it is, switching out commanders is just going to draw it out further.
Not sure if this would be better in its own thread, but any implications for our involvement/disengagement from over there?
Personally, I’m a fan of bringing them all home right away, having a parade and calling it a victory. Maybe we could just bring all the soldiers home without telling anyone, and then if someone notices just say, “Oh, that was McK’s personal staff!” 
I’d love to see that, too, but unless Obama does a complete reversal and admit the error of his current strategy, I can’t see it happening. So, no, I think no change.
However… our NATO allies might have more trouble re-committing when they next have to do that.
Obama needs to get this over and done with and out of the news cycle. Maybe he’s secretly praying for another major mishap by BP to get overtake this on the talk shows…
“I need a celebrity wardrobe malfunction, stat!”
I think Petraeus is better suited for this job than McChrystal was, assuming that the U.S. should be pursuing a robust counter-insurgency strategy in Afghanistan.
The problem I have, and which I’ve always had, is that I don’t know how you make counterinsurgency work in Afghanistan, because there’s no civil society to build up. One of the keys to a good counterinsurgency is the existence of a middle class - a group of people who, given enough protection, will rebuild the economy and who have a lot to lose by having the insurgency come back and win. No such thing exists in Afghanistan.
If you want to go back and read the archives from way back, my position has always been that Iraq made sense from a strategic standpoint primarily because there was no way to ‘win’ in Afghanistan, so you had to do an end-around and try to change overall conditions in the Middle East rather than continually fight in a place where there was no possibility of success.
So while I think Petraeus is a better choice than McChrystal, I have a lot less hope that he’s going to be able to do succeed in Afghanistan than I had in his ability to succeed in Iraq. I hope to be proven wrong. And as I said, I think Obama made the right choice here.
Which is why I prefaced my comments with, “Depending on how cynical you want to be…” I agree that #2 is low probability, but that all depends on how mad McChrystal is, and how much he really believes that Obama’s political appointees are responsible for the state of the war.
Sh!t!!!
Better off running into the hills of Afghanistan and hoping you can come out with Osama bin Laden’s head on a stick.
Wouldn’t that be a demotion for Petraeus, Sam?