On a previous firing

[pecunium]

"I didn't fire him [MacArthur] for being a stupid son-of-a-bitch, I fired him for disobeying orders. He is a stupid son-of-a-bitch, but you can't fire generals for that, or you won't have any left."
- Harry S Truman

Comments

[charisstoma.livejournal.com]

This is a very apt quote.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

That's not an example of the most tactful things Truman said -- or the most true, I think -- but it's not inappropriate at this moment. (The version I remember, incidentally, left room for as many as a third of his generals to be left.) My impression is that Gen. Petraeus isn't much smarter than McChrystal, but is a much better politician, and at least isn't likely to make _that_ mistake.

OTOH, as several people have pointed out, being In Command when we decide to give up on the doomed Afghan Attempt will not be a plus, career-wise, so maybe McChrystal isn't utterly stupid.

[sinboy.livejournal.com]

I suspect that, like Vietnam, the military and the conservative movement will blame liberal civilian leadership for any failure in Afghanistan, inevitable or not.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Probably. *sigh* It'll probably work, too. They have a PR system that is often able to convince the American Public of some pretty fantastic (and often untrue) things.

Which might be a kind of Poetic Justice -- few prominent Liberals (much less Democrats) spoke out strongly when the Conservatives/Republicans got us involved (1) in these wars in the first place, or when they fouled-up by switching from the Afghan war to the purely-optional Iraq one.

(1) I can't say "declared those wars" because ... ummm... I can't remember when the Congress last actually declared a War, as per the Constitution that conservatives sometimes insist on interpreting strictly.

[sylphslider.livejournal.com]

The US has only formally declared war five times - the War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, and World Wars I and II.

The Revolutionary War was not formally declared because we didn't have a Constitution or a sitting Congress - we weren't the US back then. The Civil War was not declared because Congress had just fractured and no one knew what was going on - and then Lincoln drafted 75,000 soldiers and reacted to the attack on Ft. Sumter. The Union did not recognize the Confederacy as a separate government, so there could be no declaration of war.

The other wars were all military actions overseen by the President with little to no input by Congress. The first of those occurred under John Adams, against France, in 1798, and was a naval war. The longest was the Apache War, from approx. 1840 to 1890.

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

Definitely. (http://harpers.org/archive/2006/06/0081080)

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Which may well be true, despite the fact that it's demonstrably false.

Why hasn't the Kandahar operation started yet?

I used this quote about Gen. George McClellan yesterday: "If McClellan was furnished with an army of a million men, he would claim to be facing a force of two million, and refuse to act until he commanded three million."

McChrystal may be a man of personal courage, but as a general, he's been just as cowardly as McClellan.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

The problem with the appositeness of the quotation is that it's not completely relevant.

What McChrystal did was disobey an article of the UCMJ, which is not, quite, what MacArthur did.

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

Well, I saw this in a forum today, and it's an interesting twist on the "stabbed in the back" meme:

"I think the guy wanted to get fired so he could spend his old age denying culpability for what he sees as our pending failure."

Basically, the idea is McChrystal did the military career equivalent of suicide-by-cop, except he now gets to loudly proclaim how he was fired before the world could see the wisdom of his generalship... Again, just like McClellan.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

Hrmn....

I can see that. The question is, did he want to do that when the reporter was there? What's the lead time on Rolling Stone? I don't argue that it's a good explanation, and COIN is failing in Afghanistan; which may have been evident when the article was being written.

But there is also a sense (because it wasn't a quick interview and be gone) that he really does have that level of disdain for his civilian leadership.\

Then again, that also maps to McClellan. :)

[hal-obrien.livejournal.com]

"The question is, did he want to do that when the reporter was there?"

Hard to tell. Looking for a source to point you to regarding one of the fascinating aspects of the story -- the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull volcano in Iceland trapped McChrystal and his entourage in Paris, complete with the Rolling Stone reporter, Michael Hastings -- I came across this piece in the Gaurdian. It's worth looking at.

[baron-elric.livejournal.com]

Failure in Afghanistan began in the fall of 2002 when US troops were moved into defensive stance to make ready for operations in Iraq. The failure was lined up over the next six years when the top leadership treated Afghanistan as an irritating afterthought that had already been won, and thus required no more attention.

At this stage the best hope for the US is to try to salvage some kind of diplomatic relationship with the survivors after the feuds and old rivalries pick up again. One of the Taliban groups looks awfully likely to be at the top of the bloody heap at that time, so it isn't going to be nice, or pretty. This will be part of the legacy of the Bush doctrine that he thinks historians will applaud in a few years.

[waterlilly.livejournal.com]

Truman cracks me up. This sounds like something my Dad, who was a colonel when he retired, might have said about a lot of his subordinates, and would have thought about his superiors.

Having grown up with an officer father, I will tell you that having political sense and connections is much more valuable to a career officer than being intelligent. My thought on McChrystal is that he had a catastrophic failure of his political sense when he made the statements in question if he didn't want to get fired. Considering what it would have taken for him to be where he is, I actually wonder if he was just tired of what he was doing and wanted to get fired.

[pecunium.livejournal.com]

I think part of it is that "COM" commanders (and in this case he is sort of the equivalent of one) are satraps. They have huge powers, they treat with nation states; and get rubberstamped when they need approval.

The "clubby" nature of the service, shared hardships, shared ideals, shared experience, is such that, as one moves up, the ability to surround oneself with people of a like character makes it possible to get a very insular group. A good commander will avoid this, but it's not hard; when one has so much riding on things, to end up with a group of cheerleaders.

Given that, and it seems his staff is all of a mold, it's not a surprise he ended up with a staff that sees that sort of behavior as normal, and didn't hide it from the reporter.

[thecoughlin.livejournal.com]

The is also the virtually universal acceptance of "what is said with a beer in hand stays at the bar" mentality where (especially) officers get into a juvenile mentality .
(Know it 'cause I wus one, long long ago in a galaxy far , far away)

There is no stupid like beer stupid, pzrticularly when security clearane level info is involved.