Mr Obama has dual hatted General Petraeus to serve as commander in Afghanistan in addition to his current job as CINCENTCOM. (Well, it does simplify the chain of command as Petraeus is now his own boss.) General Petraeus did an adequate job as commander in Iraq and, is well thought of by Republicans. Most importantly from the perspective of the Oval Office Inmates, General Petraeus has spent most of his career in billets requiring a nuanced interaction with journalists and politicians.
General McChrystal, as is shown by the ill-advised remarks so eagerly seized upon and quoted by the writer of the Rolling Stone piece, is by background, training, experience, and orientation a warfighter, a special operator. Men of this variety as the Geek can attest from much personal experience, are given to blunt honesty, eschewing the finely nuanced speech so beloved by politicians, journalists, and academics. In short, General McChrystal calls it as he sees it to the best of knowledge and belief.
Blunt honesty and the integrity which sustains and permits honesty constitute an anathema to politicians and others who must make deals regardless of actual cost. One may be certain that General Petraeus will never rock any administration boat, insult any civilian lamebrain, or perturb the sleep of even the unjust.
Whether General Petraeus can win the military portion of the war in Afghanistan is a more open question. While there are never any certainties in war--other than men will die--the informed, impartial observer would have been reasonably sure of backing a winner with McChrystal and his radically different approach to the war in Afghanistan. That degree of confidence can no longer be said to exist, if for no other reason than the impact of the McChrystal sacking on the morale of American forces and on the willingness of the Karzai regime to put a high degree of trust and confidence in the will and ability of the Americans to win.
Another very real impact of the Obama decision to rid himself of the troubling general resides with the enemy. There is no doubt but the Taliban and others of its ilk will be encouraged in their will to resist by the removal of the only senior American commander to have bested the black hats in both the military and political arenas of war.
Where the McChrystal strategy and operational doctrine focused in large measure on disrupting the organizational integrity of the insurgents, the Obama action has been to disrupt, perhaps fatally, the American organization. Where McChrystal had taken great pains to demoralize the senior echelons of Taliban et al, the Obama action has done the same to the good guys--to us and our allies including the Afghan National Forces.
In the forthcoming rationalization there is a high likelihood that Mr Obama will echo the words of all too many writers of editorials and others of the pundit class. He will aver, or at the least, imply, that General McChrystal was both insulting and insubordinate in his words and the words of his staff.
This justification is, at best, a crock of caca.
The characterizations offered of Joe Biden, and Messrs Eikenberry and Holebrook to say nothing of the other "wimps" in and around the White House may have been ill-chosen but they were accurate in the extreme. With the exception of SecDef Gates and SecState Clinton (exceptions that were made explicitly by General McChrystal and his staff), the members of "Team Obama" have demonstrated repeatedly that they were incapable of understanding and appreciating the realities on the ground in Afghanistan. If not evil counselors, these worthies have shown themselves as inept counselors. They merit the disapprobation heaped upon them by the general and members of his staff.
The truth, particularly when presented in a very blunt way, may be both inconvenient and painful, but that does not make it any less of the truth. The president had put on the combat boot of the general's words and loudly announced by his action that the boot both fits and pinches.
As for the insinuation that the general was being in any way insubordinate or rejecting of civilian supremacy, that accusation is utterly specious. It has utterly no validity. If one wants to witness insubordination in action he need only revisit the Affair of General of the Armies Douglas MacArthur.
Dugout Doug directly and repeatedly violated explicit orders given him by the president of the United States, Harry Truman. For that, General MacArthur well deserved being fired as he was by President Truman.
Nothing said by General McChrystal is in the same universe with what MacArthur did. General McChrystal violated no orders. Nor would he. A man of the background and experience of McChrystal would obey any lawful order he was given. Or, if obedience would violate his greater oath to the Constitution or his responsibility to and for the lives of the men under his command, then General McChrystal would do the honorable thing--he would resign his commission.
The Geek has heard men say far worse words concerning their superiors both uniformed and in mufti than anything attributed to General McChrystal or his staff. Heck, the Geek has said far worse during the stress of a war ill-fought and the sight of men dying without useful outcome. But, the Geek and others like him were fortunate that they were of low rank--and that they had no rat of a journalist pretending collegiality while in their midst.
It is a personal misfortune for General McChrystal and a national tragedy for all Americans that the general was not similarly situated and thus able to speak openly, honestly, and candidly about people of high station who by their actions betray the trust which had been placed in them.
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