The article in this week's Rolling Stone depicts McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to persuade even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.
Now, McChrystal is on his way to DC to explain himself.
It is unacceptable for a senior general to whine about his superiors in the White House. That thinking should be restricted to private moments with trusted staff. Anything else on policy should be privately given to the White House. Otherwise, soldier on. Or resign if he can't do that so someone else can do their job.
I also can't believe that the general whined about his troops. He needs to spend more time explaining the reasons rather than complaining about their views of rules of engagement.
His troops would charge machine gun nests for him (well, for their comrades in their unit, as a practical matter, but you get my point). It is more difficult to grasp the chain of cause and effect that firepower restraint will provide in the war than it is to grasp the value of silencing a machine gun at the cost of losing your own troops. But the effort must be made. That would be more valuable than wasting time with unfriendly media types.
Look, it may be that the rules of engagement need to be refined. We have to learn and refine them. Over time, we may need to do more than refine them as circumstances change. And even absolutely correct rules of engagement can be applied incorrectly. There are lots of ways to die in a war, and troops will die with no mistakes and perfect ROE.
But the big picture is correct. We need to have restrictive rules of engagement to avoid alienating the people. You think counter-insurgency is tough now when we have friends to protect? Try it with a largely hostile population. That will be tough. Is this situation unfair? Sure. Get over it.
Strategypage writes about the ROE situation and notes:
Many Afghans are not happy with this policy, with foreign troops increasingly encountering angry Afghan civilians, who demand that NATO act more decisively in pursuing and killing Taliban gunman. Even if it puts Afghan civilians at risk. This is an unexpected side effect to the change in NATO rules of engagement (ROE) in Afghanistan. The ROE change was partly in response to popular (or at least media) anger at civilians killed by American smart bombs. As a result of the new ROE, it became much more difficult to get permission drop a smart bomb when there might be civilians nearby. Now American commanders have to decide who they shall respond too; Afghan civilians asking for relief from Taliban oppression, or Taliban influenced media condemning the U.S. for any Afghan civilians killed, or thought to be killed, by American firepower. What to do? So far, the decision often favors the survival of the Taliban.
Taliban propaganda, and the enthusiasm of the media for jumping on real, or imagined, civilian deaths caused by foreign troops, made people forget that far more civilians (about four times as many) had been killed by the Taliban. But because Afghans have been conditioned to expect more civilized behavior from the foreign troops, much less media attention is paid to the civilians killed by the Taliban and al Qaeda.
Of course, Afghan civilians are aware of who is killing most of the civilians, and that's why the Taliban and al Qaeda are moving down in the opinion polls. But for the media, hammering foreign troops get every time they kill a civilian, or are simply (often falsely) accused of doing so, led to the ROE becoming far more strict than it ever was in Iraq.
Significantly, Afghan opinion of the Taliban continues to drop. That is a metric of winning, people, and it is partly a result of our firepower restraint.
And Afghans are learning about the curse of getting what you wish for. Faced with the reality of getting NATO firepower restraint, Afghans may clamor to unleash the hounds on the enemy that torments them.
We need to tweak our ROE to compensate for Taliban adaptation. We may be able to contemplate major revisions if Afghan popular opinion swings enough.
Through it all, McChrystal needs to explain the reasons his troops need to show restraint. He needs to adjust the rules of engagement to keep up with the enemy's tactics. He needs to prepare the Afghans for easing the rules to better kill Taliban if the Afghans will accept the price of more accidental innocent dead at the hands of our troops for the benefit of many more lives saved by stopping the Taliban who kill Afghans deliberately.
And McChrystal needs to set an example to his troops by soldiering on rather than publicly griping about his boss.
President Obama would be within his rights to fire McChrystal. I hope the president doesn't do that, to avoid disrupting the war effort.
And I hope that McChrystal learns a lesson to suck it up and soldier on, keeping his opinions to himself in order to stay on the job and win the war--and save more of his troops in the long run by winning sooner rather than later.
Win the war. Bitch later. That applies to POTUS, O-10s, and E-5s.
UPDATE: Gates issued a statement:
"I read with concern the profile piece on Gen. Stanley McChrystal in the upcoming edition of ‘Rolling Stone’ magazine. I believe that Gen. McChrystal made a significant mistake and exercised poor judgment in this case. We are fighting a war against al Qaeda and its extremist allies, who directly threaten the United States, Afghanistan, and our friends and allies around the world. Going forward, we must pursue this mission with a unity of purpose. Our troops and coalition partners are making extraordinary sacrifices on behalf of our security, and our singular focus must be on supporting them and succeeding in Afghanistan without such distractions. Gen. McChrystal has apologized to me and is similarly reaching out to others named in this article to apologize to them as well. I have recalled Gen. McChrystal to Washington to discuss this in person."
Yes, go forward. And learn, please. We're at war, remember?
UPDATE: Read the actual article. One, some embarrassing things were said--mostly by staff--but nothing sounds insubordinate to me. Two, McChrystal is trying to get the troops to understand the concept of restrictive ROE to win the war. Three, one really bad example of patrolling was clearly not how the ROE and COIN are intended to be carried out. Four, the article is clearly anti-Afghan war. Be careful who you grant that much access to.
Bottom line: McChrystal should not be fired. But he should be worried he'll be fired for as long as possible. Some of Obama's people as well as Obama himself should be embarrassed by how they look--but they probably deserve it. They should support the general as he tries to win the war.
But the cumulative effect of this and other statements means McChrystal is up to the line of keeping his job. If the general can't learn from this and focus on the war after this crisis of confidence, then he should go.
UPDATE: If there was momentum building toward the firing of McChrystal, I think it peaked. The general is getting words of support from a lot of people involved in the war.
If President Obama fires McChrystal, I won't complain. It is his right. But it won't be the best decision the president could make, under the circumstances.
UPDATE: McChrystal is out. Petraeus will take charge of the war directly.
I'm sorry McChrystal is out, I'll not mention the issue again as it is the president's right to fire a general, and we should all now soldier on to win the war. That's been my advice from the beginning of this issue, after all.
