Back into the Shadows: The Sudden Demise of a General

President Obama has dismissed the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, amidst an uproar caused by an article published in the Rolling Stone magazine. McChrystal, who carried the hopes and expectations of many in spite of the marked escalation of the conflict, lasted little more than a year.

This was my bottom line when he took command last June (I’ve taken the liberty of re-publishing the post in question):

The implicit expectation, of course, is that McChrystal and his hand-picked team of officers and advisers will do for Afghanistan what David Petraeus and his team did for Iraq. Given the dismal situation on the ground, that would be an amazing achievement. But don’t hold your breath. McChrystal might have arrived just in time – or much too late. Last week was the worst ever in eight years of war, with over 400 insurgent attacks. Five years ago, that figure was lower than 50. It has been on the rise ever since. Turning Afghanistan around will be a daunting task – it might be beyond the capacities of even the most gifted general.

It was beyond his capacities alright. But that’s not what cost him his job – not directly, anyway. In fact, had he been able to produce more tangible progress on the ground — and, frankly, I doubt anyone else could have done so — a couple of careless remarks published by a left-wing magazine would not have broken his neck quite so easily or quite as quickly. The kind of journalism that got McChrystal the boot is the kind empowered as much by growing doubts and waning public support for the war, as by the foolishness of its “suppliers”, in this case McChrystal and his team.  In this sense, as in many others, what Michael Hastings did when he went about writing his incensing article was deeply opportunistic. If the situation on the ground would have been less dire, the remarks in question might never even have been published.

On the other hand, they might never have been made in the first place. But then again, they weren’t exactly unusual, and would not have been, even under less difficult circumstances. After all, what was said was inappropriate mainly by the standards that apply to the public sphere of politics, but by the standards of “inner circles” everywhere, it was pretty trivial. The outrage caused by these remarks is as overinflated as it is hypocritical, in a way only American liberalism can be. Wearing four stars on your collar, or being close to someone who does, doesn’t make you a pristine superhuman being and everybody knows it. It doesn’t delete all the nasty words you’ve ever learned from your vocabulary and doesn’t make you feel positively about all the people you have to deal with. It doesn’t mean you’re never ever allowed to be frustrated with someone, or that you must not, under any circumstances, vent your anger or animosities.

As for the guys in Washington, who now pretend to be shocked by this “outrage”: Does anybody really believe a hothead like Rahm Emanuel, who likes to play around with steak knifes while uttering death threats to his Presidents’ enemies, has never called some stonewalling Republican or other an asshole in private White House policy sessions? Do you really think the President himself has never said anything “disparaging” about any of his political opponents, his NATO allies, or, for that matter, about members of his own administration? It’s plainly naive to think that “important” people, soldiers or civilians, are that different from the rest of us.

Enter the military insubordination argument: “But surely the relationship between politicians and soldiers is an asymmetrical one and surely the soldier can’t just defy his civilian masters?” Answer: Yes, firm civilian control of the military is terribly important. But subordination is part of the officer’s public face, it’s not part of getting drunk after hours or whatever led to these remarks being made in the presence of Hastings. And actual insubordination occurs when a soldier defies the express orders of his commander. (George McClellan did so on numerous occasions and at one point convinced himself that he was destined to become dictator, but Lincoln, who exercised strong civilian oversight by any standard, did not dismiss him for pragmatic reasons.) McChrystal never did anything of the like and what he and his aides said hardly amounts to insubordination.

What it amounts to is incredible carelessness, the real point being: when some Obama administration official feels like calling some political or military figure a “f*cking prick” (and I’m sure it happens every other day), he or she usually doesn’t do so over lunch with a Fox News correspondent. Just why McChrystal, who is considered politically savvy, and his team gave Hastings that kind of access is hard to tell, but my suspicion is that, during those days in Paris, Berlin and later in Afghanistan, they came to trust the guy in a way a solider who’s fighting an increasingly unpopular war should never trust a left-of-center journalist with an anti-military agenda, which is apparent throughout this deeply flawed article. They obviously thought of Hastings as a “friendly” who wouldn’t stab them in the back, whom they could talk to openly without finding themselves in the kind of jam the came to find themselves in. They paid dearly for their mistake, which was their’s alone. I’m sure others will learn this lesson carefully.

What remains is a misbegotten war that’s still getting worse day by day. People will soon start to blame McChrystal for this state of affairs, because he now makes an excellent scapegoat. But that won’t get them very far. My impression is that, during the past 12 months, the situation in Afghanistan was managed as well as it could be under the given circumstances, with few notable exceptions. The sudden change in command at this difficult time won’t make it any easier. But the real issue is the overall strategy, the kind that tells you not just how you can win a war, but why you’re fighting it in the first place. Assertions to the contrary notwithstanding, the Obama administration doesn’t have a comprehensive grand strategy. What it does have is a theory of victory formulated by McChrystal and based on COIN, which is now being discredited by scribblers like Hastings, who tries to obfuscate the real problem — that the civilian leadership has no clear conception of the national interest with regard to Afghanistan and Pakistan, can’t explain to the public what America’s sons and daughters are dying for every day and is basically trying to muddle through so they can get reelected — by accusing the military of bullying the president-messiah into one surge after another.

As long as these fundamental questions have not been answered convincingly, it matters little that the man who will take over from McChrystal is no less a figure than Gen. David Petraeus, who will be leaving his relatively safe CENTCOM post to take over a command that amounts to a demotion and that only a man driven by an extraordinary sense of duty, or a man who has very little to lose, would be willing to take over at this time. And Petraeus stands to lose a lot. So does the man who sends him there. President Obama is about to  up the ante considerably by putting the reputation of his most famous and probably his most capable general at stake. Sending Petraeus is a pretty stong signal of committment: “We’re in this to win, no matter what.” I’m not sure that’s the right signal anymore. (Remember that old rule of battle:  “Never reinforce defeat.”) And even the most capable general is not a substitute for a sound grand strategy. Thus, even with Petraeus at the helm, the chances of success are slim and the chances of doing even greater damage are considerable. The bottom line remains the same, only it’s now Petraeus himself who is expected to replicate his success in Iraq. Given the task at hand, we’re about to witness either the greatest military demystification of our time or an apotheosis. Me personally, I don’t go for the latter.