White House summons US general to explain himself

[TheMercenary]

Well I knew him during his time at the Ranger Bat, not personally, but we all knew him. We attended the daily brief when we deployed with them. Eventually he became the commander of our parent unit but I was long gone by then. He was a no nonsense guy back then and I doubt he has changed his core values. But the reality is that once you get past 1 or 2 stars it is nothing but politics as they interface with the portions of our government that are controlled by civilians. But as much respect as I have for the man, the soldier, he should have known better than any before he spoke. The only thing I have thought of is maybe this was his way to say he wanted out deep down inside. Maybe he had enough of the civilian control and contraints placed on the operation due to politics and he felt like it was beginning to effect the prosecution of the War. Who knows, I certainly don't, complete speculation on my part. But the whole thing strikes me as this event as him being way out of his character. In the end I think that Obama needs to relieve him or as classic suggested accept his resignation. Civilians control the military in our society and this is how it is set up. All of us accept this. One thing you learn early on is no matter how good you think you are and no matter how important you think your contribution to the mission is, you are replaceable. There are numerous other people out there with similar experience to McCrystal that can do that job. The other reality is that Generals often direct but the real action guy is the one on the ground conducting the mission.

In general terms I think people are beginning to see that unlike Iraq, you can't take a country from the stone age and bring it to the near 21st Century. Coruption is swallowing up most of the money being fed to prop up the infrastructure. The people are not completely behind the process of change and modernization and it is much more of a opportunistic social structure. IMHO much like many African nations and the levels of coruption seen there with oil exploitation.

Now we are really starting to see some ground level disgruntlement with new ROE and this is quite bothersome. As much as I hate to say it, yes much like Vietnam. If you want us to win it we need to be able to complete the mission with as few constraints as possible. Without interference or with minimal interference. Maybe McCrystal is thinking the same thing.

Originally Posted by ZenGum

The comments in this thread really strike me - UT, Bruce, and especially Merc. It reminds me of when Walter Cronkite started questioning the Vietnam war after seeing the South Vietnamese Police chief execute/murder the VC prisoner. People who have supported the war - in various degrees - looking very critically at it.

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

But as much respect as I have for the man, the soldier, he should have known better than any before he spoke. The only thing I have thought of is maybe this was his way to say he wanted out deep down inside. Maybe he had enough of the civilian control and contraints placed on the operation due to politics and he felt like it was beginning to effect the prosecution of the War. Who knows, I certainly don't, complete speculation on my part. But the whole thing strikes me as this event as him being way out of his character.

It could have been completely accidental as well. This perspective makes sense after reading the article.

How could he be so dumb? That question has nagged at me ever since I read the original story. McChrystal already knew that the White House thought he undermined them in public last fall (he didn't, really, but they thought he did); and he already knew that his boss was very thin-skinned. How then, could he get himself in this situation?

I think I have figured it out. If you read the Rolling Stone article carefully, you can see that the reporter, Michael Hastings, has woven three stories together. One story is the story of General McChrystal trying to keep up morale in a tough war with his troops thinking he is too worried about civilian casualties and he is forcing them to accept too many risks as consequence. This is also the story of McChrystal feeling under time pressure from Washington. I bet this is the story Hastings pitched to McChrystal's staff and the story McChrystal thought was being reported. It is, indeed, sprinkled throughout the Rolling Stone article, and in this thread McChyrstal is pretty careful about what he says and generally comes off pretty well.

The second story is Hastings's rather tendentious reporting on what McChrystal's enemies and critics say against him -- their complaints, and their doubts about the war. While assessing reporter's motivations is always a dodgy business, I suspect that this is the story Hastings pitched to his editor. The whole thing has the feel of a hungry guy hoping to hunt a big trophy kill: taking down a four-star hero and showing that his war plan (note how Hastings describes the strategy as McChrystal's, not the president's) is fatally flawed and doomed to failure.

If those were the only two stories in the article, people would only be talking about the Rolling Stone cover. The problem for McChrystal is that there is a third story woven through the article. This is the story of McChrystal and his staff on an unexpected layover in Paris when a plane is grounded because of the volcano. This part of the story has a "weekend in Vegas" feel to it. The staff get drunk. The French get dissed. Holbrooke gets dissed. McChrystal and his staff joke about how they would answer a tough question about Vice President Biden's theories about the war. Without having access to Hastings' notes, I can't be sure, but I am willing to wager that 95 percent of the really objectionable material comes from that layover.

This third story was an accident - serendipity for the reporter and a train-wreck for McChrystal. The underlying facts are not surprising or accidental at all. Anyone who has interacted with the military, especially the special ops community from which McChrystal hails, will recognize the swagger. More to the point, we have known for over a year that Obama's national security team is plagued with serious internal bickering and that many of the principals, and especially the staffs, do not like each other. In short, it is not surprising that they talked this way. The only surprising bit is that McChrystal and his staff talked this way in front of a reporter, though less surprising when you factor in the "sailors on unexpected shore leave" aspect.

Now, of course, none of this excuses McChrystal's behavior, nor the more egregious behavior and comments of his staff. There is no "what happens in Paris, stays in Paris exception" to civil-military relations. Clearly, he allowed an unhealthy command climate to percolate and then bubble to the surface in unguarded moments. And it was reckless in the extreme to talk this way in front of a reporter who clearly was on a scalp-hunt (giving this particular reporter this much access was a monumental blunder and the person responsible was the first casualty of the day). Those are mistakes enough to justify McChrystal submitting his resignation, though I am not sure accepting it is the right call for the President. Civil-military norms demand better behavior from senior commanders.

But I think I understand it a bit better now. A very sad episode, but a bit less mystifying than when I first encountered it.

http://shadow.foreignpolicy.com/post...pened_in_paris