Eccentric Flower:201006/McChrystal

Columbina:

P.S. I realize there are going to be some people who toss the concept of "insubordination" around, and I can understand why, but here's the thing: If you look inside that word you'll find the word "subordinate," and I'm not sure that applies at this level. Or, put another way, if Obama can't accept backtalk from one of his generals, who will he accept backtalk from?

-- 17:16, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

P.P.S. There are a number of people who have the theory that McChrystal, who they believe is way too smart not to have seen the repercussions of talking to a Rolling Stone reporter that way, essentially was committing suicide - that it's his way of getting out of the whole mess.

It's an interesting theory.

-- 17:18, 24 June 2010 (BST)

DanLyke:

The "committing suicide" thing is the only theory that makes sense, given the way I saw much lower ranking military personnel choosing their words extremely carefully during the Bush II era.

Of course I'm also looking about to see which cushy job he ends up taking... Maybe a book deal with laundered proceeds when some Southern California "think tank" buys up the first press run?

-- 17:33, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Jweader:

When McChrystal took over as COMISAF/USFOR-A, he was judged to have such poor media relation skills that he was assigned an external (that is, non-military) adviser to help him interact with the media. Doing this is becoming more common, but it does say two things: 1. He didn't have much media savvy at that point, and 2. His previous roles didn't have enough of the combination of combat command and media relations to have warranted such an assignment before.

I don't buy the suicide theory. There were better ways for him to get out than mouthing off about the President.

As for your insubordination comment, McChrystal was three levels below Obama:

• Obama (POTUS)
• Gates (SECDEF)
• Petraeus (CENTCOM)
• McChrystal (USFOR-A)

I'd hazard a guess that there are very few people who would tolerate this kind of "backtalk", as you put it, from someone three levels below them.

And remember that McChrystal was already in hot water for subverting the chain of command and making disparaging, public remarks about Obama. Back when Obama was still thinking about the Afghanistan strategy (which led to the current surge), McChrystal was very vocal to the press about what he thought the right course of action was. Obama didn't take very kindly to McChrystal trying to influence a policy decision outside of the chain of command.

This episode was the second major strike (at least) against McChrystal.

-- 17:53, 24 June 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

MethChrystal is a scumbag who participated in the cover-up of Pat Tillman's death from friendly fire. http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2010/06/24/2010-06-24_tillman_coverup_chrystalclear.html

Don't confuse candid, private disagreement with public insult and insubordination. I think MethChrystal could have argued policy and approach all he wanted to, if he did it behind closed doors and didn't use insulting terms when referring to his civilian superiors.

Even people like McCain and Lieberman said MethChrystal had to go. Indeed, Obama's pick of Petraeus is brilliant, in that it shuts up all the right-wingnuts -- how can they complain about their hero taking over in Afghanistan?

-- 18:05, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

I was hoping you'd weigh in on this, Josh. You are my gap-coverer in all matters pertinent to chain of command. I stand corrected.

Robert: The Tillman matter was my first bit of evidence that McChrystal was, as I say, kind of an ass. That said, the point about doing this sort of criticism from behind closed doors instead of calling out publicly is well taken. I have assumed it was deliberate, but taking into account what Josh says, it may just have been ineptitude.

Perhaps I'm more sympathetic than McChrystal than I should be since, in the same position as he was, my temptation to use insulting terms toward my superiors would have been overwhelming. Then again, there's a reason I've never gone anywhere near the armed forces in my personal career arc ....

-- 19:05, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Emily:

"when soldiers blindly obey bad orders, people get killed who might not have needed to die."

Okay, but when soldiers decide that they know better and decide to disobey orders, people get killed who might not have needed to die. I don't mean to suggest that blind obedience is where it's at, but there's a chain of command for a reason, and it's because the guy who is doing the thing he's ordered to do may not fully grasp the entirety of the strategy.

-- 21:10, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Danima:

You know, I saw this on the papers and wondered if my corner of the internet was going to have something to say. So far it's LiveJournal: 0, individually-hosted journals: 2. Here's the other one, which I think answers some of your points in a way you might not expect: Unpardonable or Unacceptable?

If you don't have time to go read, here's the concluding paragraph:

It's the third paragraph from the end that I really want you to see, but it's too long to quote.

-- 21:46, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Actually it's Vardibidian's second-to-last paragraph that is key to me:

Of course I am more in favor of generals trying to subvert the power structure when I agree with their decisions - which is to say, when they try to nudge the president toward "this war is stupid" (a direction I tend to lean, not because I am so strongly anti-war but because every war since WWII has been fought for inadequate and stupid reasons). But V. is scared of a junta, and well he should be, and notes correctly that generally when the generals have tried to make politics, it has not worked out well (case in point: Pakistan, the spike at the bottom of the tiger pit under discussion).

But now we come to Emily's point: I do not actually say that soldiers should sometimes disobey orders (although the law has gone back and forth on this). But this is not and has never been a case of disobeying orders - this has been a matter of public mockery and (as V. points out) very bad judgement. My point is, a president who cannot and will not tolerate public mockery, yea, even within his ranks, sort of scares me, because it sets precedent in a nasty way for what behavior he expects of the public and the media. For me the primary mark of a dictator, no matter how benevolent, is when absolutely no public criticism is tolerable (viz. the king of Thailand, who is apparently a nice old man, but it is nonetheless officially a crime in his country to diss him in public in any way, even casual conversation).

I realize this is a long way from that; this is a case of someone getting drunk and making off-color jokes about the boss at the office Christmas party. (I don't go to office Christmas parties.) But I am as scared of this slippery slope as Vardibidian is of the one that leads to Juntaland.

(Also, my boss is not a public figure. The President is. I think anyone and everyone should mock Obama as early and often, and for as broad a range of things, as possible. Keeps him honest.)

In summation: It's really a shame he did it the way he did it, because V. is right - Obama had no choice but to fire him - which will in the long run obscure the fact that, in this particular case, in vino veritas and damn the torpedoes, McChrystal spoke only the truth.

-- 22:14, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

I guess the problem really is that I'm more tolerant than I should be of "this war is stupid" speech, regardless of the person saying it, and less tolerant than I should be of "we need to go to war here" speech, again regardless of the person.

If we ever decided to fight a war I approved of, I'm sure the ratios would change, but there's only two nations in the world we have a genuine need to invade today, and it's unlikely we'll ever invade either, because either would be very bad and messy for a number of reasons.

-- 22:16, 24 June 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

You do understand that the Biden/"Bite Me" comment emanated from the Vice President's opposition to the escalation of fighting in Afghanistan, right? MethChrystal's comments weren't an attempt to "nudge" the Administration to the view that the war was stupid; it was a statement that they thought the civilians running the war, including those like Biden who was opposed to an escalation, were stupid.

-- 22:32, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Mrissa:

"Unlike most of the rest of us, when soldiers blindly obey bad orders, people get killed who might not have needed to die."

Yes. And unlike most of the rest of us, when soldiers disobey good orders or dither about obeying good orders, people get killed who might not have needed to die.

The reason prompt obedience of orders is the default in place--along with the rest of military discipline--is not because people in charge get off on it, although I will not deny that many of them do. It's that the circumstances are often such that *both choices* are dangerous.

If you believe that the orders being given you are in general bad orders that you cannot obey promptly, or that *any* orders are orders you need to question before obeying them, then you do not belong in the military. Yes, this does mean that you do not belong in the military. And it does mean that I do not belong in the military. But this is not a circumstance in which you can rely on having time to argue every single point. Not every human circumstance works out that way. And the military is a lovely example of one where geeks feel totally capable of second-guessing it, in the way that a surgical team in an operating room is not, because everybody agrees that if you are having an emergency surgery, you want your life saved, and people are a great deal less enthusiastic on the necessity of having a particular group of people killed. But the point remains that not every circumstance is amenable to debate at every moment, and our geeky peers have great difficulty with that.

-- 23:33, 24 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Robert: I did know that. However, I meant that I assumed the climate which led McChrystal to shoot his mouth off at all was one of frustration with being forced to fight in a situation where there really is no possible resolution given the set of ground rules that have been imposed on him. I agree that the substance of his specific comment about Biden was not about that, nor really about the war at all. It was "Biden is an idiot," a sentiment I find myself mostly agreeing with.

Mind you, it's possible I could be completely wrong and McChrystal actually was perfectly happy with the ground rules which had been set and the situation imposed upon him, in which case he's just a jerk. (Which I was willing to concede from square one anyway!)

Mrissa: I agree with you - in actual battles. There is no time to question anything in combat, which is the historic justification given for why military training is such a brutal, sadistic, torturous experience. But in terms of military strategic planning - should we go here, should we fight here, do we belong here - my stance on questioning, rethinking, and second-guessing is that no one, in or out of power, general or President or layman, is doing damned near enough of it. Because, as I think we agree, once we actually send people in and the fighting starts, it's already too late to rethink.

I believe that if we were actually making rational decisions about where and who to fight, and who the actual threats to this country were, we would not be in Afghanistan at all right now. (This lends credence to the theory that our presence in Afghanistan really has nothing to do with the ostensible public reasons why we are there, just as the reason we went into Iraq had nothing to do with Hussein and everything to do with Junior's Oedipal issues. I have heard a number of theories about why we're REALLY in Afghanistan and I find all of them equally odious if true.)

I say again: There are only two really dangerous nations in the world right now, and we are not likely to invade either. Note I said "nations." The simple fact is that national security hasn't really been a matter of nation vs. nation since just after World War II. You can't effectively send in soldiers against an army of faceless terrorists with nuclear suitcases. But we like to pretend we can still accomplish something with that obsolete concept, a standing army.

[Sorry. Now you know why I don't write about this topic more often. It all just comes pouring out and turns into an incoherent rant. Suffice to say I find our nation's military policy - by which I mean, how big a military do we keep and what do we do with it - an economic boondoggle at best and an extremely dangerous force at worst. Our army right now is like Chekhov's gun; because we have it, and because there is so little actual need for it (no one is ever going to invade the United States), you just know that it's going to go off in someone's face sooner or later.]

-- 03:43, 25 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

Incidentally, you can take this as evidence of why I only post once a fortnight. I'm sure eventually I'll have something to say that doesn't cause an unintended discussion where everyone tells me all the ways in which I'm wrong. When I find it, I'll be sure to put it here.

But it won't be about the government, politicians, political parties, the American political spectrum, the American military, higher education (I stopped myself from writing a rant on that two days ago), the American public, organized religion, corporate America, American law and judiciary, or the press. All of which, right now, I kinda fervently hate.

(And lest you think I have anything positive to say about the rest of the world, I'll just say that another entry I didn't post is about how I've learned that Europe is even more hateful in many ways than we are. Did you know that Belgium is pulling itself apart because, essentially, the hard-working Flemish part hates the lazy-ass French part? Did you know that all the -stans are an utter mess and Stalin deliberately made their borders that way to keep them down? Can someone tell me again why reorganizing borders along ethnic lines is such a bad idea, given that apparently nine-tenths of the fighting in Europe and Asia is about, "We don't want to live in a country with those people, we want to live with our people who are right next to us but happen to be on the other side of that border there?")

See? There I go again. Everything good happening in my life right now is not interesting to talk about, and everything interesting to talk about is not good.

-- 03:51, 25 June 2010 (BST)

Columbina:

I would like to add that my comment above does not reflect any disgust with any of you - after all, you're just calling it like you see it. It is entirely about my disgust with myself. (And this entry was originally so neat and clean and brief! And then I went and shat all over it.)

By the by, you can add science, technology, sport, and the environment to the above list.

-- 04:24, 25 June 2010 (BST)

Bunny42:

I kind of think it would be instructive to see the full, uncut, unedited interview, before RS put their spin on it. I think I know they had an agenda, a preconceived idea, for which they were soliciting supporting commentary. I wonder how bad the general's comments would have been, if taken in context. I do think it was stupid to grant such an interview in the first place. What else could he have envisioned happening? But I'd love to see what else he said that didn't make it into print.

-- 06:37, 25 June 2010 (BST)

Danima:

Don't forget Kurdistan, which was cut into three pieces by the British for the same reason. Just, you know, brightening your mood.

Okay, in a sincere attempt to brighten your mood: have you been reading the webcomic Gunnerkrigg Court? I get the feeling it might be to your taste. Start at the beginning.

-- 18:11, 25 June 2010 (BST)

Iain:

Something you might find interesting. The commentary starts a couple of paragraphs below the comic.

For what it's worth, I somewhat agree with the writer about Afghanistan. Somewhat. Assuming that the Soviet-era maps are right about the mineral resources -- which would make the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan actually make sense, which it never has -- I think that's going to wind up being an unmitigated disaster for that country, if it winds up mattering at all. After all, the country has to be stable enough for mining operations to work, and that doesn't look like anything that's going to happen in the near future.

Domestically, I think the administration is caught between two untenable positions. The thing to do militarily would be to massively increase the military presence in Afghanistan to a level where it can actually achieve and maintain some sort of result (along with figuring out a way for the Afghans themselves to do something about their impressively corrupt government). That, however, is a politically intolerable decision; the public wants OUT, and doesn't much care if that country is left in a mess. After all, if it gets too bad, we can always throw a few dozen Predator drones at the bad guys, right?

The mess in the middle east is already the longest declared war in our history. (Which is saying something, if you think about it. Longer than the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812, at a point in time when war generally took a lot more time because of the transit issues. Vietnam was much MUCH longer, but undeclared.) What the public wanted was to go in, punish and decapitate Afghanistan's government for shielding bin Laden, and then go home. What they got was "we broke it, we bought it." It's not surprising that nobody has a tolerance for seeing it go much longer, or get much bigger.

-- 18:28, 25 June 2010 (BST)

ProfRobert:

Iain, Afghanistan isn't a declared war; it, like Vietnam, is a congressionally authorized military action. The last declared war was WWII. (Bonus points for anyone who knows the year it legally ended -- I knew ballpark, but had to look up the specifics.)

-- 21:05, 25 June 2010 (BST)