CBS reports:
So political pressure was brought to bear even before McChrystal submitted his assessment. How is this any different than the Bush administration’s misguided insistence on invading Iraq with the smallest possible force? When the New Republic made the obvious comparison between Generals McChrystal and Shinseki, the left went nuts — “McChrystal is NOT Shinseki… McChrystal voiced his candid views in public instead of in private up the chain of command. Eric Shinseki did nothing of the sort.” Well, now we know that before McChrystal went on 60 Minutes or gave his candid assessment of the need for more troops in a speech in London, he went up his chain of command with a request for more troops that was not rejected, but altered for political reasons. The administration was determined that its commander would never even get the chance to ask for the resources he believed necessary and would instead request a lower number — a number McChrystal considers a bare minimum. This is exactly what the left decried during the Bush administration — the blatant politicization of a national security issue. If President Obama does not want to follow the advice of his commanders, that is his prerogative as commander in chief, but the president should not order his commanders to change their reports and requests in order to make them more politically palatable. A year ago it would have been impossible to find anyone on the left who would disagree with that statement (and of course most liberals thought President Bush had done just that when “General Betray Us” came back with his initial assessment of the surge), but now they will defend Obama and attack McChrystal. And why wouldn’t they when senior administration officials are smearing McChrystal in the Washington Post in order to shift the blame from their own incompetence?
