Category: Election ’08

A very catch title to a story; that quite frankly, has me slacked jawed.

Gen. Stanley McChrystal gave a reporter unfettered access to himself and his staff; and boy did the dirty make it to the press, the article is in Rolling Stone: (Language Warning!)

‘How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He’s in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany’s president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

“The dinner comes with the position, sir,” says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.

McChrystal turns sharply in his chair.

“Hey, Charlie,” he asks, “does this come with the position?”

McChrystal gives him the middle finger.

[….]

Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. “I never know what’s going to pop out until I’m up there, that’s the problem,” he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.

“Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal says with a laugh. “Who’s that?”

“Biden?” suggests a top adviser. “Did you say: Bite Me?”

Believe me, I’m reading though this thing, it gets worse. This alone right here; will most likely end his career:

By some accounts, McChrystal’s career should have been over at least two times by now. As Pentagon spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more like a White House mouthpiece than an up-and-coming commander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous “stuff happens” remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChrystal backed him up. A few days later, he echoed the president’s Mission Accomplished gaffe by insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over. But it was during his next stint – overseeing the military’s most elite units, including the Rangers, Navy Seals and Delta Force – that McChrystal took part in a cover-up that would have destroyed the career of a lesser man.

After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn’t read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman’s death. “If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death become public,” he wrote, it could cause “public embarrassment” for the president.

“The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat’s true actions,” wrote Tillman’s mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the “golden boy” of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman’s death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.

Some would dismiss that is liberal propaganda; but I tend to believe it.

There is more:

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fucking sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”

The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. “Fuck, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our fucking gun on,” says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. “I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all fucked up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don’t understand it themselves. But we’re fucking losing this thing.”

McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. “I ask you what’s going on in your world, and I think it’s important for you all to understand the big picture as well,” McChrystal begins. “How’s the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you’re losing?” McChrystal says.

“Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir,” says Hicks

Truthfully, the article is hard-hitting, blunt, and just plain harsh. I predict that McChrystal will most like retire. McChrystal was, to be fair, a holdover from the Bush Administration; but his Military service predates that. McChrystal is just a tough Military man, that knows the business; more than Obama. He also knows that he does not like the current administration in Washington D.C.

Ed Morrissey says:

Some will say that we have had plenty of brilliant generals who won wars while being difficult and opinionated. That is true, but even those generals understood to keep their opinions within a tight, private circle — and knew not to encourage insubordination among their staff. George Patton wound up getting fired for airing too many of his opinions about de-Nazification and the Soviets publicly while administering post-war Germany; Douglas MacArthur, one of the most self-centered military leaders in American history, succeeded brilliantly until he publicly challenged his Commander in Chief on war strategies. Being right, or at least mostly right, didn’t do either Patton or MacArthur much good in the end, nor should it have.

So far, McChrystal hasn’t earned enough leash by winning anything. Regardless of what one thinks of the current C-in-C, Obama is still the man elected by the people to run the executive branch and the military. The picture this article paints is one of a lack of discipline and respect, and the White House has every right to demand an apology and replace McChrystal with someone who understands better the subtleties of overall command and its politics.

Will Obama fire McChrystal? It’s hard to say, mainly because of the critical juncture we face in Afghanistan and McChrystal’s deep involvement in all phases of the effort. But after reading the Rolling Stone article, which McChrystal has yet to deny, it would be very hard to blame Barack Obama if he canned McChrystal over it.

However, a Military expert who spoke to Tapped, which is a blog for the American Prospect; which is a progressive Blog — says, No so fast on the insubordination charges:

So do McChrystal’s comments amount to insubordination? No, says Eugene Fidell, who teaches at Yale University School of Law and is president of the National Institute of Military Justice. “I don’t really think this is contemptuous,” says Fidell. “I don’t think it makes the needle bounce under Article 88. There’s ‘contemptuous words’ and being disrespectful,” Fidell added. “Those are two different things.”

That said, Fidell still believes McChrystal should go. “The real problem here is that an officer at his level has to set an example, and the president has to have complete confidence in an officer at that level,” Fidell says. “McChrystal has to resign or retire.”

“You cannot have a senior official saying this kind of thing,” Fidell says. “It’s a democratic society, but you can’t have this kind of dissension at the highest levels [of the military]. People have to get out if they feel that way.”

UPDATE: Since most of the disrespectful comments came from McChrystal’s aides and not McChrystal himself, I asked Fidell whether these rose to the level of insubordination under Article 88.

“The officers in his staff are in for some heavy weather, if that’s the water cooler conversation,” Fidell said, predicting that they would face some kind of consequences. But added that he didn’t think the anonymous comments amounted to insubordination. He added that administration officials were “entitled to better.”

Either way, McChrystal has been summoned to the White House to get his tail kicked; or at least to have a beer summit:

KABUL — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Tuesday that his top commander in Afghanistan “made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment” in making dismissive and derogatory remarks to a magazine reporter about U.S. government officials involved in Afghan policy.

Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal has been summoned to Washington to explain a Rolling Stone article that includes highly critical comments by him and his staff about Vice President Biden, U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Karl W. Eikenberry and other top Obama administration officials.

The profile of McChrystal, titled the “Runaway General,” is certain to increase tension between him and the White House. It also raises fresh questions about the judgment and leadership style of the commander appointed by President Obama last year in an effort to turn around a worsening conflict.

“I read with concern the profile piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the upcoming edition of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine,” Gates said in a statement, adding, “Our troops and coalition partners are making extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our security, and our singular focus must be on supporting them and succeeding in Afghanistan without such distractions.

“Gen. McChrystal has apologized to me and is similarly reaching out to others named in this article to apologize to them as well. I have recalled Gen. McChrystal to Washington to discuss this in person.”

Blackfive; which is a very nice MilBlog is all over this. You can read the entries about this Here, Here, Here, and Here.

Michelle Malkin makes a very good point:

No matter how right or wrong I think Gen. McChrystal may be (praise here, criticism here), I think we can all agree that in a time of war, the last place a military commander should be blabbing is an anti-war pop culture rag that specializes in slime.

Cannot say that I disagree with that.

The fallout so far, is an Civilian Press Aid has gotten canned:

KABUL — Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s civilian press aide resigned Tuesday over an upcoming magazine story that portrayed the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan and some of his aides as derisive toward Obama administration officials.

Duncan Boothby, who has been on McChrystal’s staff for roughly a year, was the first casualty of a controversy that prompted White House officials to summon the general to the White House to explain the remarks in the profile that will appear in this week’s issue of Rolling Stone.

Boothby was heavily involved in arranging access for journalist Michael Hastings to McChrystal and his staff this year so Hastings could write the profile, titled “The Runaway General.”

An official in Kabul confirmed the resignation, speaking on condition of anonymity because it was a personnel issue.

Boothby is not a military officer. He is one of a growing number of civilians hired as press aides for senior military brass as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue to generate considerable public interest and controversy.

Military officials say civilians are often better suited to provide constructive criticism and unconventional ideas than military public affairs professionals. In many cases senior generals have reached out to former journalists for an outside set of eyes. Often these civilian aides have a loose portfolio and are brought along in part because they aren’t as constrained by the military’s chain of command.

Expect more fallout.

The roundup of reactions from the right and the left; can be found here.

I am just waiting for some idiotic race-baiting twit on the left to accuse this guy of being a racist bigot for having the stones to criticize President Obama.