General Stanley McChrystal is profiled in this weekend's New York Times Magazine. (DefenseLINK News Photo by Helene C. Stikkel (released))
The United States' top commander is Afghanistan, General Stanley A. McChrystal is finding himself at the center of a brewing controversy this morning. An article that will be published in the Friday edition of Rolling Stone magazine features a profile of the general in which he castigates members of the Obama White House as "wimps," even referring to them as "the real enemy."
In the piece entitled "The Runaway General" McChrystal and his advisers go on to admonish top administration officials like Vice President Joe Biden ("Who's that?") and national security advisor Jim Jones ("a clown"), as well as diplomats to Afghanistan like Ambassador Karl Einkenberry and special envoy to the region, Richard Holbrooke.
The White House and McChrystal are both in damage control mode this morning, and McChrystal has already issued an apology saying, "Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard." For a look at how damaging this is likely to be for McChrystal, and perhaps the entire Obama Afghanistan strategy, The Takeaway speaks to Alissa Rubin, Kabul bureau chief for our partner, The New York Times.
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Comments [1]
General McChrystal may "eat crow," but the U.S. will eventually "eat crow," in Afghanistan. And it will happen because there is "a dog eats dog" attitude in the U.S. government in which incompetent-in-war outsiders bent on political expediency want to micromanage the war front from 15.000 miles away.
Actually, the view of General McChrystal and his sub-commanders just express their disgust of political
bureaucrats trying to run the war details from Washington rooms -rather than allow those in the first line of the Afghan war to decide how to win it! General McChrystal may have broken the military hierarchy protocol
"thou shall not badmouth your boss," but he deserves credit for reducing the wanton killing of Afghan civilians by U.S. air-strikes that have fueled the Taliban insurgency. He doesn't deserve the lynching that
he is getting in the media.
With the war casualties of the occupying forces in Afghanistan going up despite the U.S. surge, and with the Taliban becoming more effective as the war drags on, Obama's subordinates see the U.S. defeat on the wall and prepare for the blame game of "who lost the war in Afghanistan" era ahead. And, no doubt, all of them will try to strike deals with publishers and make millions in their Afghanistan books. Therefore, now is the time for all of them to prepare the scripts so they can shine in the aftermath - rather than being the ones portrayed as the buffoons who lost the war. There are always two losers in every war: a) The Generals in the field, and b) The Politicians at the top who pull the strings of the Generals. And now that the U.S. defeat in Afghanistan is taking shape, the parties in both groups have started the blame game for the soul of the American public opinion, and for their book sales bonanza. Wars make many people rich, and it is not only Haliburton contractors.
I agree with the opinion expressed by a McChrystal aide that National Security Adviser General Jones "is a clown." It is easy for Jones and the Washington politicians to try to get credit for any success in the Afghan war from their posh offices in the capital, at the expense of the people in the first line of fire in Afghanistan. There is no doubt in my opinion that Obama's staff is trying to micromanage the war from 13.000
miles away, and that attitude is certainly getting under the skin of the commanders in the field. And as the defeat of the U.S. in Afghanistan is getting closer, the dogfight among the principals of "who is to blame for the travails of the the war" has blown up like the BP oil spill in the Gulf. Nikos Retsos, retired professor
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