Michael Hasting’s Rolling Stone article wherein General Stanley McChrystal openly criticizes and, at times, unabashedly mocks President Obama, Vice President Biden, and other senior officials is the topic of much discussion today.
And for once, pundits from across the spectrum are largely in agreement that McChrystal was in the wrong for his part in producing the article at such a pivotal time. Indeed, the Washington Post earlier reported that Obama is so angry about the article that Press Secretary Robert Gibbs refused to ensure the safety of McChrystal’s job.
James Fallows of The Atlantic suggests that, “Obama has to fire McChrystal,” on principle. At the Huffington Post, Representative Alan Grayson makes, roughly the same case.
On the other side of the ideological street, at Hot Air, Ed Morrisesy thinks that, “the White House has every right to demand an apology and replace McChrystal with someone who understands better the subtleties of overall command and its politics”. And Michelle Malkin describes the situation with McChrystal as a “mess.”
There are a few dissenting voices out there. Left Coast Rebel offers that McChrystal, “just said what Americans think about Obama on other issues, too.” And Jackson Diehl posits that blame for the whole affair can be laid on Obama’s doorstep, not McChrystal’s.
I’ll cast my lot with the dissenters, ultimately. I mean, I’m prepared to acknowledge that the President is within his rights to fire McChrystal, but I don’t think he should, necessarily.
Was McChrystal critical? Sure. Were he and his aides, at times, disrespectful?Yes. Was this the first incident of its kind for McChrystal? No. Is it as big a deal as people are making it out to be? I’m not so sure.
Some folks are worried about what this kind of an incident says to our allies in the region, it is worth noting that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is sticking right by McChrystal. Worse yet, though, is the idea that the article and the ensuing kerfuffle sends the wrong message to our enemies.
The message the article sends? Apparently it shows a lack of discipline. Insufficient degrees of deference to the Commander-in-Chief. A disrespect for the chain of command. And disdain for the military’s civilian leadership.
In short, McChrystal has shown us the truth about the current state of much of the American military and the decision to go to war.
He has shown us that war is messy and can be bitterly divisive. He has shown us that people get frustrated and demoralized. And he has shown us that the decision to go to war takes a great deal out of a nation.
While I understand that a lot of people would rather that McChrystal didn’t going about revealing these truths in such a brash and irreverent manner, the question that keeps running through my head is: should he be punished for doing so?
As someone who was deeply skeptical about President Obama’s decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan and about the continued prevalence that military force plays in American foreign policy, I can’t but think that McChrystal has done us all a favor by cutting to the chase on Afghanistan. The relationship between a president and their generals isn’t as clean and cut and dry as is often the preferred depiction of delivery. Nor is the application of that force as anesthetized as we seem bound and determined to present.
The cost of going to war, particularly the cost of the last almost decade of incursions, has for too long been cordoned off to the families of those fighting over seas. It is well over due that more citizens wrestle with the ragged challenges of committing blood and treasure to a particular foreign goal.
In some senses, if the startling pictures of the Vietnam War that confronted Americans in the 1960s showed us the fog of war from the outside in, this Rolling Stone article does a good job of showing us that fog from the inside out.
We might not like what we see nor the way in which we see it. But the scene painted by Hastings in spending time with and talking to McChrystal and company is the reality of what American families from across the country send their sons and daughters into all too often. Isn’t it better that we know, acknowledge, and consider that reality, rather than persist in the chimera everyone is so upset that McChrystal has shattered?
At the end of the day, I’m not suggesting that McChrystal didn’t go about his actions in a ham-handed fashion that deserved his resulting apologies. Nor am I suggesting that McChrystal deserves some kind of commendation for his unwavering commitment to telling it like it is.
What I am suggesting is that McChrystal did, in fact, tell it like it is – and that the current degree of wailing and shirt rending seems a touch overwrought in response to the truth of the matter.
The real debate to be had here is given the facts on the ground, will/should American presidents continue to be so steeled in their determination to use military force as a means of achieving foreign policy goals?
