Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”
As a young 2nd Lieutenant, one of the things that had long since been drummed into my thick skull was an understanding of civilian oversight and control of the military. Even then, I knew that my job ultimately depended on the satisfaction of men wearing suits, not olive drab uniforms. One of the realities that any officer deals with is the frustration of having to deal with civilian oversight. No, civilians don’t “get it”. They don’t understand the military, the issues they face, or the desire to cut through the crap and get the job done…and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The reality, though, is that civilian oversight and control of our military is one of the things that separates us from so many banana republics. In America, the military exists to serve this country and its civilian leadership. Lose sight of that as a career military office and the life expectancy of your career will be very, very short.
When I heard the news yesterday about General McChrystal’s interview in Rolling Stone, I was dumbfounded to say the least. That a career military officer as talented and intelligent as McChrystal would be so phenomenally careless, arrogant, and just plain stupid around a reporter defies rational expectation. One simply doesn’t rise to the level of a four-star general in charge of a theater of operations without being highly intelligent and at least reasonably politically savvy. McChrystal’s career-threatening meltdown may have been the result of significant frustrations; dealing with Washington civilian weenies from Kabul can’t an easy proposition. Nonetheless, McChrystal knows full well that he serves at the pleasure of the President, and at some level he had to know that his unfettered honesty would pose a problem for him.
Unfortunately for McChrystal, he may well be a living advertisement for the Peter Principle, the idea that one rises to the level where one’s incompetence does them in. In McChrystal’s case, it may not be incompetence as much as hubris and a distaste for the political aspects of his job. Ultimately, it’s this distaste for politics that will, even if it doesn’t cost him his job this time, no doubt dog McChrystal for the rest of his tenure in Afghanistan. The man should know better, and he’s in the position he’s in simply because he couldn’t keep his damn mouth shut. That’s about as simple as it gets.
I read the Rolling Stone article, and while it’s not the verbal smackdown many in the media have made it out to be, it’s something I find even more disturbing. McChrystal’s inner circle comes off as isolated, cocksure, and arrogantly convinced of their own superiority. It’s not a recipe for the sort of military-civilian collaborative effort required by McChrystal’s position. Clearly, McChrystal is an outstanding soldier possessed of a gifted and agile military mind…but he sucks at the politics.
Being a “highly intelligent badass” may serve an ambitious junior officer well, but it’s not exactly a recipe for success for a four-star general in charge of a theater of operations. Now he’s put his boss, President Obama, in a hell of a position. Fire McChrystal…and he risks turning McChrystal into a martyr for the far Right and creating the impression that he’s losing control of the war in Afghanistan. Don’t fire McChrystal…and he runs the risk of looking as if he’s losing control of the generals. Damned if he does…and damned if he doesn’t.
Sometimes, being a “highly intelligent badass” is just a fancy way of saying “horribly arrogant and cocksure dumbass”. This is one of those times.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that McChrystal was the chief facilitator of the cover-up of the truth behind the death of Pat Tillman….
Meanwhile, this generation’s Vietnam continues unabated, a war that can’t be won because no one can say with any authority what “victory” is supposed to look like. Those who do not know history are indeed condemned to repeat it. WE DESERVE BETTER.
