The White House, Democrats and the media have been having a collective cow over Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s remarks, as reported in Rolling Stone, expressing disappointment in our commander-in-chief and critical of the president’s team’s handling of the war in Afghanistan.
Some are calling it insubordination. Others say McChrystal has to be fired — comparing him to Douglas MacArthur, whose slashing critiques of President Harry Truman during the Korean War ended that general’s career. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell wondered if the remarks were a violation of the Military Code of Conduct; MSNBC’s Larry O’Donnell even called them a challenge to civilian control of the military. At least one report yesterday had McChrystal offering to resign.
Anyone who actually reads the article will wonder what the flap is about. The fact is, the general may have done a great service for us all, including our troops in Afghanistan.
What emerges is a portrait of a no-nonsense soldier dedicated to his men and to a tough strategy of counterinsurgency, which demands limiting civilian casualties whenever possible in fighting an enemy who likes to use civilians as a human shield.
McChrystal does say it was “painful” waiting for President Obama to make up his mind last year about launching a surge in Afghanistan like the one used in Iraq, and he doesn’t convey great respect for Vice President Joe Biden’s ideas about how to fight the Taliban. But that’s a long way from “Seven Days in May” — and Biden is no one’s commander-in-chief.
Instead, it’s unnamed aides, not McChrystal, who are quoted as describing National Security Adviser Jim Jones “a clown,” mocking Biden as “Bite Me” and saying McChrystal “was pretty disappointed” when he found that Obama “didn’t seem very engaged” in dealing with this seven-year-long war.
So why is the White House so furious? Maybe because the story tells so many unwelcome truths.
The truth is, in the Senate both Obama and Biden opposed the similar surge in Iraq, and tried to undercut American success there — and then had the audacity to try to steal credit for our success.
The truth is, while American soldiers died, Obama dithered for nearly three months before largely adopting McChrystal’s original surge plan — arbitrarily cutting the number of troops in the surge from the 40,000 McChrystal had said was needed to secure its success to 30,000.
The truth is, our forces are hampered by “whatever you do, don’t shoot anyone” Rules of Engagement that make fighting the Taliban very difficult, and victory almost impossible.
Some point out they are McChrystal’s own rules. But when you’re working for a president who doesn’t see the bad guys as bad guys, who tells a class of West Point graduates he doesn’t want soldiers who like “fighting for fighting’s sake,” and who considers combating climate change as urgent as combating terrorism, it’s hard to see what choice he had.
And McChrystal’s criticism of the White House team won’t do anywhere near as much damage to our cause as have Obama’s public withdrawal deadlines for both Afghanistan and Iraq — deadlines that dishearten our allies and encourage al Qaeda and the Taliban to wait us out.
That is the real issue which this flap conceals.
Right now we have a president who hates being commander-in-chief, with no clear strategy beyond a deep and earnest desire to get the hell out of Afghanistan. Deadlines and troop-withdrawal schedules aren’t a plan, they’re a substitute for a plan. They also hand the initiative to the enemy.
This is what happened in Vietnam. The more success we had in pacifying the country, the more troops we pulled out — while the enemy stayed right where he was.
We threw away our hard-earned strategic and political leverage — and instead of becoming a free society and strong ally, South Vietnam was left to be overrun by an evil totalitarian regime. Untold tens of thousands were murdered, thousands more became refugees. A third of a century later, many still are.
A similar tragedy is about to be played out if we fail in Afghanistan.
On Afghanistan and so many other matters, we are waiting for this president to get off the golf course and get into doing his job. Whether or not it forces the general out, if this flap can get Obama focused on his responsibilities as commander-in-chief, Stanley McChrystal will deserve all our thanks.
Arthur Herman’s most recent book is “Gandhi and Churchill: The Epic Rival that Destroyed an Empire and Forged Our Age.”