McCrystal
I'd like to add my two cents on General McCrystal's removal from his command Obama relieves McChrystal of his duties; names Petraeus as replacement. It was unavoidable in the starkest sense In replacing McChrystal with Gen. David Petraeus, Obama reasserts authority - CSMonitor.com. The asides and opinions that appear in that Rolling Stone piece are absolutely inexcusable. If one were hired (in the real world) by some large hierarchical self-affected enterprise and then started a web log where you opine that Bosses X are doofuses and greater nimrods than a wet-nursing newbie. What you are going to win for yourself is free time. And this was worse than that. It speaks directly to the command atomosphere, A smug condescending sanctimonious timocratic rot. It speaks to a notable lack of command discipline, or bare professionalism. At some point when such language and opinion as that article revealed was being tossed out, the senior officer present ought to have demonstrated the presence of mind and leadership to tell his subordinates to stow it. It makes little difference - no difference - that much of this occurred in supposedly an unguarded moment. There are no unguarded moments around the press What Gen. McChrystal should have known about Rolling Stone's reporter going in. - By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine. The press has its job.The military has chosen to contrive that presence of the press is always public relations, because it is so controlled. If the press is around you, it's on your call. In letting these attitudes become public. McCrystal and his staff were compromising their mission. They certainly compromised their part, and did no good to the overall mission.
There were a lot of people this week who set themselves out to making alibi's for this. It was indefensible, though, and they could have saved themselves the trouble. Publicly criticizing the policies, and comprehension of the senior civilian leadership of the military -- up to and including the executive. This is a red line you do not cross if you are active duty. Without any shade of question if you are an officer holding a commission. It is a bright and glowing a red line as exists, and everyone in the military or who has ever been in the military knows this. It is alluded to in the UCMJ [Uniform Code of Military Justice - Wikipedia]. Those who pretend not to know this are exhibiting a degree of, I don't know, call it willfulness. Those who were well satisfied when Admiral William Fallon was forced out of CentCom for considerably less egregious statements are hypocrites. Those have called retired officers who voiced criticism of this set of entangling and unproductive wars, traitors, but decry McCrystal's removal as a hero wronged are hypocrites.
Andrew Bacevich, retired Colonel and professor of history (who lost a son also a soldier to this war), has a short piece in today's Washington Post Endless war, a recipe for four-star arrogance in which he claims a condescending attitude towards the civilian leadership is now endemic within the military. He lays this at the feet of a war that has lasted a decade and a public which has little or no connection to it. I wouldn't disagree. General McCrystal from what I have read was a good soldier. In the manner with which he tried to fight this war he seems to have stood with reason. But he was not wronged here. He failed rise above this malaise, and committed an unforced error.
The next line offered is that they, McCrystal and his staff, were somehow speaking "truth" to power? That this was their real crime. Truth? Not so much. They weren't doing more than churlishly running the dozens. The inference latent in such - expressions - of frustration, is that people just need to get out of the Armies way. This misregards the nature of our system, it misreads the terms of of the former surges success in Iraq. A different country, different people, different situation. Not a straight forward insurgency as much as a low grade civil war where a religious and social-elite minority was being shoved aside, out of its urban neighborhoods and out of power by a newly unrestrained and unsubjugated majority. What insurgency existed was largely eliminated as these forces, restricted by our urban escalation, maneuvered towards an ordinarily murderous political process.
It's difficult to see what truth they might be offering about the war in Afghanistan either. The tempo if not the momentum in Afghanistan lies with the Taliban at the moment. Nation building under Karzai? That man will never be more than than a presiding figure over a ill-run and corrupt subset of Afghanistan, Never the whole nation. Neither elections played for effect nor the US Army will change this. He will be at best a transitional figure. There is no real demonstration yet that the military have brought something new to the prosecution of small wars other than a recycling of the ancient ways: escalation, increased severity, and permanent presence. Even less have they answered for the logistics and attrition traps of such wars. The President brought General Petraeus back down from the theater command in an optimistic belief that suppressing insurgencies is a needle that can be threaded by those willing to be careful, patient and understanding enough The Night Beat: Obama Borrows the Military Back - Politics - The Atlantic. That in the end insurgencies have less to offer than a civil regime willing to meet its obligations. That hostility will increasingly splinter itself before this.
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