I know very little about military matters. In my short history of paying attention to politics in a country fighting two wars, I haven’t shown any gift for analyzing war strategy. When I was 14, I supported the Iraq War. A few years later I opposed the surge. Last fall I supported Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan. Conventional wisdom of today might say I’ve been wrong on all three of these, the largest military decisions of the last ten years.
But I’ve taken a great interest in General McChrystal’s comments and subsequent resignation, which has elicited diverse responses from different thinkers. Tom Ricks, who wrote the fantastic account of the early Iraq War, Fiasco, wrote that McChrystal had simply been out in the field too long. An article in the New York Review of Books suggested that McChrystal’s comments reflect the frustration of a general facing an impossible mission and an unwinnable war. Another writer suggested that one should view McChrystal and his aides as a group of soldiers on shore-leave unwisely letting off some steam. Fareed Zakaria characterized McChrystal as a great warrior and a charismatic leader, but a poor statesmen with little appreciation for the civilian side of the COIN strategy. I’m skeptical of Zakaria’s portrayal since McChrystal helped design this strategy, and I don’t recall anyone questioning his suitability for its particular demands last fall.
My initial thought was how could any general make a mistake this big? You don’t criticize your boss or your colleagues in public. McChrystal--and any military officer--surely knows this better than anyone. Plus this Michael Hastings, the writer of the expose, is from Rolling Stone Magazine, which has for fifty years divulged the private lives of rock stars and celebrities to its subscribers.
Indeed, when my friend, Erin, and I first read the article here in Moldova, she immediately posed the question of what McChrystal could have been hoping to achieve in the article. Thus arose the possibility that this was perhaps intentional, a way for McChrystal to signal something to the White House. Few seem to have taken this line, except Rolling Stone Magazine itself. The executive editor of the magazine said these weren’t “off-the-cuff remarks” and that the general and his aides “knew what they were doing.” Likewise, in an interview with CNN Hastings says that McChrystal is a “risk-taker” who, he suggested, may have been “pushing an agenda” and simply “pushed the envelope too far.” Hastings also said that he didn’t exactly have to dig for this information. He landed on the ground, and the comments started flying. I have to think that McChrystal at least partially knew what he was doing. He may have miscalculated, but he could not possibly have said these things in front of a reporter without the expectation that they would eventually reach the American public and the president.
So what was his calculation? Based on his documented contempt for Special Envoy Holbrooke and Ambassador Eikenberry, and the documented pressure from soldiers to have freer rules of engagement, I think McChrystal may have been signaling to President Obama that he should either rein in the civilians or fire the general because the current balance of power was unsuitable. If this was his intention he seems to have executed it poorly. Even so I find this more plausible than the general and his aides accidentally confiding in a magazine known for reporting what happens behind closed doors and backstage.
This left President Obama in a difficult long-term political situation. It capped a few weeks of negative reports about the Afghanistan War, and certainly provides ammunition against him for the next election.
But Obam’s solution for the short-term seemed fairly clear to me. Not firing McChrystal could have been justified, especially if McChrystal is as popular with the troops as reports say. But Obama still would have appeared weak, and given that the media’s quickest analogy was President Truman and General MacArthur, keeping McChrystal would have gone against historical precedent as well.
But he could have his cake and eat it too by firing McChrystal and replacing him with Gen. Petraeus. Petraeus would meet approval from the troops, the Republican Party, the media, and the public. Today Sen. Graham said that if Petraeus can’t lead the United States to victory in Afghanistan, “no one can.” And that’s exactly what Obama needed. It won’t save his skin if the war ends in defeat of US interests, but he may be spared the sharpest criticism if the consensus is that the task he inherited was simply impossible.
It remains to be seen what this episode has sown for the future. President Obama was lucky to have a convenient exit strategy for this one. That’s more than I can say for the United States military in Afghanistan.
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