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Samizdata quote of the day “It is typical of the spin era that the first serious “crisis” in relations between General McChrystal and President Obama occurs over a few disobliging words the General and his team spoke about the President and his team. The endless rounds of deaths and dangerous patrols, the delays in finding political settlements on the ground and the ubiquitous ability of the “insurgents” to reappear are not apparently worthy reasons to recall the General for talks, but a magazine article is.”
– John Redwood, MP and blogger.
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Wrong. The ‘disobliging words’ dealt precisely with the issues on the ground (and laid the blame over them at the feet of the White House), their style and tone notwithstanding.
Or maybe that’s what Redwood actually had in mind, but I still don’t like the way he phrased it.
I think you got it right the first time, Alisa. “Is ill judged gossip in a magazine reason to remove the Commander he told us all to believe in?” Redwood seems fixated on the tone of the Rolling Stone article rather than its substance.
Frankly, if the Commander in Chief and his top general have a disagreement over war policy, I think that is a legitimate reason for his dismissal. It’s certainly happened before,* and whether the President’s policy ideas are the better ones is irrelevant; he is, after all, the boss. The fact that such disagreement first publicly surfaced in a popular periodical should be irrelevant.
Unfortunately, if McChrystal goes I fear that it will be solely because of that article, and not over any policy differences. This is a president who seems almost totally concerned with style over substance. As T. Coddington Van Voorhees VII put it, “in some ways I am beginning to believe this Obama fellow is unequal to the task.”
*Truman/MacArthur and Lincoln/McClellan come to mind. I’m detecting a pattern here: these removed generals both had “MaC” or “Mc” at the beginning of their names, as does McChrystal. A bad omen for him?
As a retired U.S. military officer with memories of Viet Nam, I have the strong suspicion that McChrystal found it easier to get “retired” for a gaffe before this administration’s half-a$$ed policies failed, than to stand up and demand publicly the changes that would increase the chances for victory.
Of course, standing up publicly would also get him “retired”, but with a lot of criticism from the Politically Correct.
Either way, the helicopters lifting off from our embassy in Kabul will not have McChrystal’s name on them.
Yes George, I’m far from being well-informed on military matters, but I’m unimpressed with this guy, not the least because of his chickening out and issuing hurried apologies all over the place.
George Atkisson – you will remember how people begged General Westmoreland (and Admiral Sharpe) to go public with what they knew about the whole mentality of President Johnson and Rober McNamara.
Neither of these men (or Nixon after them) thought in terms of WINNING THE WAY (as you know – “victory” was not part of their mental universe).
Yet Westmoreland would not speak out – indeed he continued the “all is going well” farce.
Either fight to win a war – or GET OUT.
You know that a lot better than I do.
Alisa – yes the Stanley McC apology stuff has been rather sickening.
Especially the bit about how he “admires” Barry O’Obama (whom everyone in the military despises in private).
By the way this is nothing to do with Barack Obama’s Marxism – Lenin or Stalin would have had no trouble winning this war (indeed there would not have been an “Afghani” alive in the whole country inside a year – they would not have just killed the Taliban, they would have killed everyone, genocide “just to be on the safe side”).
Barack Obama is a useless nonentity – quite apart from his Marxism.
I repeat if Washington DC and London are not serious about WINNING this war (as always “political settlement” means DEFEAT), then pull everyone out now.
If the Taliban are going to win – then they might as well win now. I repeat – win or pull out (no more games).
Is not over a 1000 American deaths and over 300 British deaths enough?
Do we have to wait for the almost 60, 000 American deaths of Vietnam?
Either fight to win a war – or GET OUT.
Spot on Paul, but what does Victory in Afganistan look like, does anyone know?
Is propping up the corrupt govt of Karzai winning? Is he and his friends any better with their theft of aid money and drug smuggling than the swivel eyed Taliban?
Politicians believe that all peoples and cultures are the same. All you need to do is sit them down and talk to them, and everything will be straightened out to everybodies mutual benefit. I dont.
Some folk hate us and our culture, our demacracy and freedoms. They always have, and they always will, so short of killing every last one of them, we are just wasting our time, money and worst of all, precious young lives.
Let’s get out now and leave the stinking mess to be the 7th century hellhole it likes to be.
Keep the drones and the satallites, if a new terrorist training camp needs to be taken out, then the drones or a few cruise missiles will take care of it, because winning this war in a WW2 sense in never going to happen in a million years.
Oh and McCrystal seems to be running the operation along the lines of Brando in Apocalypse Now.
Not to rain on anyone’s parade, but it might be worthwhile to actually read the article in question. Or at least something from someone who has.
Well, under Bush dissent was the highest form of patriotism. Under Obama, dissent is the highest form of racism.
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Obama and the Democrats don’t want to win the war. In their hearts they want the Taliban to win, after all the Taliban are the Marxist “oppressed” and therefore morally superior. And, to them, every dead American soldier is one less ReThuglican vote.
Unfortunately, they know they can’t openly act on their true desires, which is why they have to emptily mouth phrases like “we support the troops” and Obama has to stay in Afghanistan.
But he doesn’t have to have a real battleplan and he doesn’t have to keep from hobbling his generals with inane Rules of Engagement.
Afghanistan was just a prop to hit “The Jew-Puppet George ‘Chimpy’ McHaliburtain Bu$Hitler” over the head with. Now it is just a distraction from his desire to remake America in Bill Ayers’ image. Obama would gladly lose Afghanistan if he could get away with it. Instead, he’ll just use it to bleed the hated military (baby-killers all).
We should (but won’t) leave Afghanistan now. There is no point in being there if we are just there to lose or tread-water.
Just heard “Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been relieved of his duties and will be replaced by current CENTCOM commander Gen. David Petraeus.”
If Petraeus has any ambitions past the military or a desire to have a positive legacy (untarnished by a Vietnam-style defeat), he should resign right now.
Well said, RAB.
I did read the article jdm. and other ones commenting on it.And your point is?
Neither Obama or the General have a fuckin clue how to win this war, so why are they bothering?
More worrying from a British point of view is that the General seems to believe he has no Allies in the Stan.
We Brits are mentioned not once in the article, so our 300+ dead must be a figment of my imagination then?
The French get a mention though, and look how disparaging he is about them!The man is an arrogant asshole, and should be replaced whoever happens to be head of State, and lord knows I have no time for Comrade Obama.
In a word… yes.
It does not matter if Karzai is corrupt. The British political establishment is corrupt so why should anyone care of the Afghan one is too… all that matters is that Afghanistan is not a haven for the people who launch attacks on the west. If that is the case then *that* is what victory looks like… not daft ‘nation building’ or ‘democracy’, which are utterly irrelevant to any sensible war aims in that shit hole.
…and the best way to deal with Afghan drug smuggling is to make drugs legal in the UK and USA and then watch the global price of formerly illegal drugs crash as legitimate business move into the market.
What Moss said in his first comment. Paul: ironically, neither Lenin nor Stalin were as deeply indoctrinated as Obama has been.
Also, what Moss said in his second comment.
First, let me say that I believe the current commitment in Afghanistan is unwinnable as constituted, and perhaps in any form. I believe that the ultimate end point desired by Buraq Hussein Obama is a reprise of the end of the First Afghan War. Logistically, we are scrod seven ways from Sunday.
That said, I’d like to make 3 points, two of which are mine and one that says something about our current regime here.
First, it must be remembered that General McChrystal was Buraq’s personal hand-picked choice, after a long and agonizing process that supposedly involved an entire re-thinking of the war. Further that after McChrystal made an ordered review of the situation and the requirements to execute Obama’s strategy, there was a several month delay in Obama making a decision, and McChrystal was only given half of what was needed and a timeline that was impossible as it included an automatic American withdrawel and defeat as soon as all the forces were in place. There is quite probably a great deal of truth in George Atkisson’s post at June 23, 2010 at 1503 hrs.
Second, the placement of General Petraeus in McChrystal’s spot, after Senator Obama expressed both contempt and distaste for the General and his strategy in the war has, in addition to more than a little bit of irony, more than a little political calculation.
There is more than a small movement coalescing around General Petraeus’s possible political future that sees him as an opponent of Obama and all he stands for after the General retires from the service. There may be more than a touch of wishful thinking involved, because his political views are unknown; but his potential as a political threat is large. He may have been selected specifically to tie him to a loss in Afghanistan to ruin his political prospects.
Third, and this is what reflects on the regime: The Rolling Stone article is probably thousands of words long. It is fairly small print, multiple columns per page, single-spaced, multiple pages. The Arizona law enforcing Federal immigration law is 3 pages, large print, double or triple-spaced. Guess which one has been read by pretty much everybody in the White House, EOB, and the Cabinet? And which one no one will admit to having read? Guess which theater of operations is characterized by a desire not to bring the full force of the US to bear, and in which theater that the US government wants to have the Feds re-enact a replay of Sherman marching through Georgia?
Anyone else get the feeling that the Mandate of Heaven is being withdrawn from our poor country?
Subotai Bahadur
MacCrystal is a corporate whore, like most US generals and pretty much everyone at the Pentagon.
As the excellent Alan Grayson has pointed out, McCrystal just wants more taxpayers money.
Why can’t the US military operate WITHIN A BUDGET, instead of wasting other people’s money like its going out of fashion?
Michael Yon says the war is winnable, and I trust his judgment. He was one of the first people to point out things in A-stan were going South. Patraeus wouldn’t have taken the position if he didn’t think it was winnable. I trust his judgment as well.
Obama’s first inclination is to impose time tables, a strategy you could call “begging for defeat”, but after everything that’s happened, and with the groundwork being laid next year for the 2012 election, the president can’t really afford to have a public falling out with the new guy. Patraeus will probably get what he needs to do the job. He’s already given speeches explicitly rejecting the timetable approach in favor of the approach that worked so well in Iraq.
Eric @ 24 June 0522 hrs
Obama is, in fact, begging for defeat, and doing his best to ensure it. I myself discount the coming elections as a factor, because both Obama and the Democrats so far have refused to moderate either policy, arrogance, or their public contempt for the will of the voters in any way, on any subject, as the elections approach. They literally are operating as if they are immune to any reaction by the voters; which behavior has raised other fears amongst aware observers. Petraeus may have extracted promises of support, additional time, the sun, the moon, the stars, and a first lien on the tooth fairy’s left goolie. But none of it is public, any such promises can be denied and Petraeus ordered to stay silent, and based on his own statements and actions since the 2008 campaign began; Buraq Hussein Obama has personally added previously unknown dimensions to the words ‘mendacity’ and ‘Taqqiya‘.
The war is winnable, ONLY IF the terms of victory are very narrowly defined, AND if the political masters of the military actually want victory and will actively support it, even at the expense of political correctness. Even Yon, I think, would agree to those two caveats. Neither of those conditions obtain.
The logistics pipeline for the entire effort is totally dependent on one port, and a few land routes in and through hostile territory subject to interdiction by both the host government that is heavily infiltrated by the very people we are fighting, and by Taliban attacks en-route. Our foreign policy initiatives alternate between attacking those who would be on our side, and toadying to and displaying weakness to those who would attack us. The Pakistanis could turn on us in a heartbeat, and we seem to work on micturating in their Wheaties at random intervals.
You may be right, and Obama will reverse every policy he has had up until now, and start working for an American victory. But the last time such a profound revelation occurred was on a road from Tarsus to Damascus to a guy named Saul. I don’t think the same factors are operational in this case. YMMV
Subotai Bahadur
To Perry and others.
There are two alternative explanations of what is going on.
The first is that Barack Obama is just an incompetent – that, in spite of his Marxism, in relation to the war he is basically like the social democrat President Johnson – a man totally out of his depth, who tries to ” split the difference” between devoting the resources and the WILL needed to win the war, and getting out.
The alternative explanation of events (the one that eats at me in the middle of the night) is that Barack Obama’s Marxism is relevant in this – that he is trying to drain the United States, by neither winning the war or ending it.
However, which ever of these two explanations is correct – the FACT remains that the war is presently a farce.
The President of Afghanistan is a corrupt man (who would make a deal with the Taliban without batting any eye – in spite of their trying to kill him from time to time, such folk are always trying to kill each other anyway), who blatantly rigged the last election – and Obama (unlike Bush in Iraq) allowed the election to be rigged.
And the way the war is being fought is also a farce – a blood soaked farce.
Just one example of what I am talking about.
The Rules of Engagement.
For example, no shooting the enemy unless they have fired first – and no shooting unless they clearly still have weapons in their hands.
Unless the Rules of Engagement are changed then WINNING the war clearly is not the objective (bleeding America and her allies is the objective).
If the Dutchman can not get Barack Obama to agree to change the Rule of Engagement (and many other things) he should RESIGN.
He most likely will not resign (out of misplaced sense of duty) – but he should.
I repeat – win the war or GET OUT.
The present policy (splitting the difference) is not acceptable.