If General McChrystal is right, it’s Obama and Biden that should be fired

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The talking heads are losing it over the comments made by General Stanley McChrystal, in Rolling Stone Magazine, about President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and their assorted lackeys in Afghanistan.

Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t like war, but if you are going to get stuck in one you could do worse than to hand the reins over the General McChrystal.

Even his critics admire him. Eliot Cohen called for his head, in the Wall St. Journal today, but even Cohen had to wax poetic about the General’s abilities:

Gen. Stanley McChrystal is a hero—a selfless, fearless and inspiring soldier. He is also something of a military genius. In Iraq, as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command from 2003-2008, he created an extraordinary military operation.

He is one of the fathers of victory in Iraq, because his organization dismantled the leadership of al Qaeda there. Few Americans know, or will know, how well he has served this country—and as a shrewd, humane commander, not merely a lethal one.

The General really can’t stand Biden, in particular. Can you blame him? I have always thought Biden was an idiot. I cannot imagine having to work with the guy.

And the General started on the wrong foot with Obama, although it wasn’t his fault. Check out this stunning excerpt from the Rolling Stone article in question:

Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked “uncomfortable and intimidated” by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn’t go much better. “It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “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.”

What this entire mess comes down to is McChrystal’s desire to win. It is debatable that we can. In fact I would not have been sorry to see us get out of Afghanistan after Obama won. But instead Obama muddled through millions of dollars and thousands more troops. The results pretty much suck.

But can you fault McChrystal for trying to do his job?

His only defender in the Obama administration is U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The article divulges all the dirty details of the war in Afghanistan, under Obama. It is fascinating reading. I figured Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai was a scumbag, but it turns out he is a worthless one too.

McChrystal does not escape criticism either. He was one of the Army guys who covered up what really happened to NFL star Pat Tillman, when he was killed by his own fellow soldiers.

And his own men expressed dismay at not being able to unleash on the bad guys. McChrystal’s counter-insurgency tactics seem to leave everyone frustrated. He is trying to win over the natives – and everytime we call innocents more of the natives end up siding with the bad guys.

One more damning quote from Rolling Stone:

When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal’s side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn’t hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny.

Getting fired might be the best thing that ever happened to McChrystal. But even then, Obama loses. He will be left to finish a war with a room full of rejects who don’t know what they’re doing.

It used to be that everyone thought that former President Jimmy Carter was the worst ever on defense. It would seem that Obama is the new Carter.

But what then is the solution? I still think we ought to pull out, Taliban be damned. We never should have gone there in the first place. We didn’t catch Ossama Bin Laden. So what was the point?

Adios McChrystal. And hopefully soon enough it will be adios Afghanistan too…


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