It's Not Personal, Sir

Back in March, in a post entitled "Into The Fog", I requested, "...if any of you can think of a convincing argument in favor of continuing the war in Afghanistan...something other than the reason most of the kids who are there give, which is 'to look out for my buddies here'...by all means, fill me in." Today, I just finished the Rolling Stone  article by Michael Hastings.  You know, the one that will likely cost General McChrystal both his job and his spot in history; hereafter, he'll be known as the general who actually believed that a friendly Rolling Stone journalist would be one of the guys, first, and a journalist, second.  I wasn't buying our chances in Afghanistan in March, before our commanding generals buckled so publicly under the strain, and I'm not buying them now, either...for the same reasons.


We will leave Afghanistan because we can't afford to fight that war no matter how many good reasons we find.  It's the economy, sir.  It isn't personal.


 In my opinion, Michael Hastings should not have published that article; that might make me look hopelessly old school, but I don't care; Hastings had to have understood that journalists who are given personal access to war commanders still have some modicum of responsibility to national interests.  Nor, of course, should McChrystal have given Michael Hastings access to his inner circle; that was the failure of judgment that puts all the general's other, possibly better, decisions in a different light.  Once that access was granted, I don't think McChrystal, who's known for his swagger and his hard-ass humor, should have been so trusting of Hasting's judgment--or so lacking in self-restraint or restraint of his staff--because journalism has its priorities; they are well-known and they are not personal.


My husband, who's had some exposure to military hubris, thinks the general must have been really pissed at somebody, that he must have known what he was doing.  I don't have that much faith in hubris.  McChrystal's a four-star; he's got exactly one commanding officer, whether he agrees with that commander or not...whether he agrees with the commander's choice of vice commander or not.  That's the chain of command.  Is this a war, or isn't it?  This isn't about Stanley McChrystal, although he's the guy who now needs to fall on his sword.  It isn't personal. 


While I don't agree with Hasting's choices of what to include and what to exclude from his story, "The Runaway General, " (odd choice of words), I have to agree with his concluding paragraph.

After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge. 

And not even when he's not.

Stanley McChrystal made the mistake of getting personal with the people he disagreed with in front of a journalist who owed him no allegiance. That's the kind of mistake that you and I might make weekly, which is why they don't hand those stars out to just anybody--which is why we expect more from any four-star general. However it goes when the general meets his CinC, it will be about the mission, the war, and the nation's capabilities.  It will absolutely not be personal.