This is what happens when you speak your mind to a rag like the Rolling Stone.
The top U.S. war commander in Afghanistan is being called to the White House for a face-to-face meeting with Obama after issuing an apology Tuesday for an interview in which he described the president as unprepared for their first encounter.
In the article in this week’s issue of Rolling Stone, Gen. Stanley McChrystal also said he felt betrayed and blind-sided by his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, as he and his aides took shots at other top officials.
McChrystal’s comments are reverberating through Washington and the Pentagon after the magazine depicted him as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration.
It characterized him as unable to convince some of his own Soldiers that his strategy can win the nation’s longest-running war and dejected that the president didn’t know about his commendable military record.
In Kabul on Tuesday, McChrystal issued a statement saying: “I extend my sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened.”
McChrystal has been called to the White House Situation Room on Wednesday to explain his comments to the magazine directly to the president, a senior administration official told Fox News. Normally, he would appear on a conference call for a regular strategy session.
The general was making a flurry of calls and decisions in the wake of the article’s publication. Fox News has learned that he fired the press aide, Duncan Boothby, who booked the interview. McChrystal also called Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen late Monday to apologize. Mullen told the general he was deeply disappointed, according to a senior military official at the Pentagon.
Evidently, McCrystal was unaware that Rolling Stone is a leftwing/anti-military publication. Jan Wenner and his staff of liberal effetes are not prone to portray the military in a positive way. Ever.
McCrystal voted for this punk??
The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the carpet last fall for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.
“I found that time painful,” McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. “I was selling an unsellable position.”
It quoted an adviser to McChrystal dismissing the early meeting with Obama as a “10-minute photo op.”
“Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. The boss was pretty disappointed,” the adviser told the magazine.
Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found frustrating. The White House’s troop commitment was coupled with a pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an arbitrary deadline.
Well, for one thing, don’t expect the self-absorbed, narcissistic Obama to actually get briefed on his commanding generals. Secondly, Obama made it clear that “winning isn’t necessarily the United States’ goal” in Afghanistan, so what does he expect?
……The profile, titled “The Runaway General,” emerged from several weeks of interviews and travel with McChrystal’s tight circle of aides this spring.
……Some of the strongest criticism, however, was reserved for Richard Holbrooke, Obama’s special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“The boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” one of the general’s aides was quoted as saying. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous.”
If Eikenberry had doubts about the troop buildup, McChrystal said he never expressed them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document, Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to execute.
McChrystal said he felt “betrayed” and accused the ambassador of giving himself cover.
“Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books,” McChrystal told the magazine. “Now, if we fail, they can say ‘I told you so.”‘
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/06/21/mcchrystal-says-ambassador-betrayed-criticism-afghan-war-strategy/
More from Politico:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/38837.html
If we fail, the blame rests squarely on Obama’s scrawny shoulders. GW Bush left him a winning hand. It’s now his war to lose, and he intends to do just that.
A McCrystal aide described the first meeting:
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.
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/gen-mcchrystal-apologizes-criticism-10977828
Obama’s pretty disengaged all the way around; intellectually, ethically, and morally.
The Soldiers tasked with fighting this war are justifiably pissed about the ridiculous ROE:
Rolling Stone also interviewed troops frustrated by McChrystal’s strict rules for combat that are intended to reduce the number of civilian casualties.
At one outpost, a Soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy. The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.
“Does that make any (expletive) sense?” Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. “We should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself, ‘What are we doing here?'”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37839756/ns/politics-white_house/
The young PFC’s gripe is right on the money. McCrystal, in conjunction with Hamid Karzai, set down 12 “rules” designed to “keep Afghan civilian casualties to a minimum”. It’s a list of bat-shit crazy, suicidal rules that lend “cultural sensitivity” to Taliban and Al Qaeda excrement, when we should be engaging in wholesale slaughter of the fuckers.
Between “Karzai’s Rules” and the incompetent assclown posing as “commander-in-chief”, it’s a wonder the troops can make any headway against the enemy. This war could have been over years ago if the United States had actually been willing to fight an all-out war. That includes dominating the battlefield, annihilating Islamic nation-states, and closing off the Pakistan border. It’s that William Tecumseh Sherman philosophy I like so well.
The mission of the United States Army is to break things and kill people, not to be a facilitator of “cultural sensitivity”. Any notion of “nation building” should be put aside until the enemy is completely exterminated and we’ve planted our flag in their capitals. THAT is how you fight and defeat an Islamic jihad.
The war will not be won with a useless fuckwad like Obama in office. He has no idea how to run a country or a conflict. The military will have to suck it up and drive on until we get a leader with enough smarts and guts to let them do what it takes to finish the job.
Related posts:
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/09/22/army-general-mcchrystals-frustration-with-obamas-afghanistan-strategy/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/obama-forgot-he-told-general-mccrystal-to-defeat-the-taliban/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/10/10/obama-all-wee-weed-up-over-general-mccrystals-criticism/
http://sfcmac.wordpress.com/2009/11/17/karzais-rules-endanger-soldiers-in-afghanistan/
well I’m not gonna argue…I said they knew about HONOR…never said they practiced it…and after the next attack…we DIE!!! and we have only ourselves to blame for the next attack…huh??? yep…here in ARIDZONA we have no southern border!!! the weapons are already here, the opportunity to use it has not presented itself yet…now stick a fork in me I’m done…..
butt,
You’re 100% correct about terrorists using the Southern border.
We’re fighting a war on two fronts; in the muslim-soaked cesspools of the Middle East and Southwest Asia, and right here at home. The next attack is going to make 9/11 look like a picnic.
SFC MAC
sorry sarg I’m gonna throw the bullshit flag…the germans, eyeties, and the nips all understood HONOR…these stoneage stinkin’ muslims don’t…and we have stopped our warriors from doing what they were trained to do “BLOW SHIT UP AND KILL PEOPLE”…it’s turned into a giant hugfest…and I saw first hand how we can lose…in Viet Nam…AFGANIPAKIRANISTAN is the same….we are LOSING OUR YOUNG WARRIORS for no good reason…if there is no clear mission there is no mission…you of all people should see that…you have my upmost respect, for several reasons, your service…your dedication to pointing out the dumbass thing the scumsuckers do, and your intelligence…
we are losing a no win battle…
Butt,
I’ll see your bullshit flag, and raise another. The Germans, Italians, and Japs were not “honorable”. Their tactics were brutal. Their concentration camps were full of tortured, starved, and beaten POWs, Jews, and every other ethnic/religious group deemed not acceptable by their respective regimes. The victims and survivors of Nanking and the Battaan Death march would beg to differ about that notion of “honor”. Those who suffered under Mussolini’s repressive fascist dictatorship would take exception to that “honor” claim. Oh, here’s something else you need to be aware of. The muslims were pretty tight with the Nazis. The Handschar (Khanjar, Scimitar or Sword) Muslim Waffen SS Divisions did their bit to help Hitler in Eastern Europe.
It was bad enough for the Cambodians and Vietnamese when we left Vietnam. The Khmer Rouge slaughtered millions. Vietnam is now saddled with an oppressive communist regime. They have “re-education camps” that house dissidents, educated people, and those who express their displeasure a bit too loudly for the government.
Again, we are at war with an enemy that has a world-wide network of support. They’re not just in the Middle East, they’re in Indonesia, Asia, Europe, Africa, and unfortunately, within our own borders.
The mission was to defeat the Islamic enemy. To kill Al Qaeda and Taliban, and make it clear to the entire world of Islamic shitbags, that America will not tolerate their terrorism or any future attacks on our soil. That’s where the enemy is, that’s where you fight them.
This is a winnable war. Obama just doesn’t want to be bothered. After all I’ve just explained to you, think about what would happen if we pulled out before the job was finished.
What happens after the next attack?
SFC MAC
I hate to quit….I’m sure or warriors feel the same….but there comes a time when thinking has to take over…
those stoneage assholes want nothing to do with democracy…
bring our youngsters home…there I said it and I mean it…and it did wind up like Viet Nam…there is no clear mission so there can’t be a mission…just more dead americans…
Butt,
Afghanistan won’t be won with Obama’s dicked-up strategy, “winning isn’t necessarily the goal”. He actually said that, by the way. Our primary mission should not be do establish democracy; first you wipe the enemy off the face of the earth, then if there’s anything left, you reconstruct. That was the approach we took in each world war, and it worked out just fine. This isn’t like Vietnam. The stakes are much, much higher. Their main operating bases were in Afghanistan. If we pull out before a clear victory, the Islamic thugs will take that as a sign of outright cowardice and a green light to undo everything we’ve accomplished. Can you imagine our country deciding that the Germans, Italians, and Japanese “didn’t want Democracy” in WWII, therefore, we should just pull out to avoid “more dead Americans”?
Iraq is pretty much stabilized. Afghanistan has a way to go. McCrystal talked about ‘betrayal’ in his complaints. A major betrayal took place the day Obama was put in charge. I cannot say this enough: The war is his to lose, and he’s doing just that.
SFC MAC