General McChrystal – Aides Open Mouth, Feet Inserted, General To Be Disciplined

The Core Belief

The biggest news of the day, broadcast on every news outlet, endlessly bantered about by pundits on all sides of every issue is the Rolling Stone profile of General Stanley A. McChrystal. In the interview, to be published Friday, June 25, 2010, the aides to the Commander of all Allied Forces in Afghanistan complain about the president, the vice president and his advisors.

The General, who’s aides called Vice President Biden “Bite Me,” is profiled by blue blazer, white shirt, gray slack wearing writer Michael Hastings as a hard charging general who speaks his mind and doesn’t suffer fools gladly. According to Hastings, McChrsytal is something of a 21^st Century Patton without the glamour but just as much contempt for the press as the World War II military icon.

The comparison is rather apt. Both men are/were, in a sense, old school military men who desire no more than to kill the enemies of the American Republic by the bushel. However, their mouths seem to get them into undue trouble. Indeed, the conventional wisdom espoused by the media vis a vie McChrystal is get rid of the bum, fire his ass, treat him like MacArthur etc.

I have read the Hastings profile. However, outside of complaining about an e-mail from Ambassador Holbroke and allowing his aides to mouth off about the leaders of the country, I’m loathe to find just how McChrystal himself belittled the Commander in Chief. This is not Obama’s great Truman Fires MacArthur Moment as many media outlets, such as the pundits on The View, have claimed.

In the opinion of your humble blogger, the General should be disciplined for the actions and comments of his people. Further, he should be excoriated by the Joint Chiefs of Staff for allowing Rolling Stone to embed In his headquarters for over a month.

Quick note to General McChrystal: you may be the biggest bad ass General currently in the US military but fighting a Counter Insurgency is an ugly business and it gives the press, especially magazines like Rolling Stone who made their bones covering the last counter insurgency this country fought in Vietnam, a HUGE HARD ON. For notes on this issue, see the Israeli-Arab Conflict – 2,000BCE to the present.