Runaway general

~ Patrick O'Grady

Anybody have any thoughts on Gen. Stanley McChrystal?

On first glance, the dude seems like a gen-yoo-wine ass-kicking samurai cross-bred with the kind of political general who has the shrunken yellow heart of a REMF but likes to dress up as G.I. Joe. I sure as hell wouldn’t want to fight him, but neither would I care to follow him into anything more dangerous than a briefing room.

A casual Google doesn’t turn up much in the way of a real combat record, and the much-hyped Rolling Stone story sure doesn’t answer many questions. It paints him as some class of Zen archer, if Zen archers also happened to be egomaniacs. Col. Walter E. Kurtz comes to mind, as does Julius Caesar. Maybe George Armstrong Custer.

My shoot-from-the-hip observation is that he’s another one of these ivory-tower dudes who has a theory he’d like to prove if you don’t mind contributing a few of your friends, neighbors and family members to the experiment.

Must be fun to be in the White House right about now, eh? Can him or keep him, it’s gonna be nothing but incoming.

• Late update: The Los Angeles Times has failed to distinguish itself on many occasions in recent years, but this aside in a straight news story about the McChrystal contretemps that should display no bias is particularly appalling:

Obama, who has not served in the military, has sought to solidify his status as commander in chief through frequent appearances with troops. Such appearances have sought to convey that he has the confidence of the American military.

Uh huh. No wonder these cocksuckers declined to hire me as a copy editor back in the Eighties, ’cause I would’ve folded that paragraph into a conical shape and shoved it up someone’s ass.

Well, dipshits, like it or not, he is the CINC, and you don’t have to go back very far to find CINCs who liked to be photographed hanging around with the grunts, feeding them plastic turkeys. Let’s hope that this one is less eager to feed them into the meat grinder.

10 thoughts on “Runaway general”

  1. After giving the impression that Mc Chrystal was given a fair hearing and due process, Obama will fire him ro keep his toughness cred. The polls show him perceived to have been indecisive in the Gulf. They will not allow that to happen again (soon).

  2. Calling a fellow General/Commander a “clown”(Jones), goes beyond mocking us “civvies”–NYT reports McWherzmakareer has already written his letter of resignation—Fucking UCI is allowing discos on CX bikes–shit guess I’ll fold up my leather helmet too.

  3. I thought we settled these sorts of questions of military protocol when MacArthur was sacked. Loose lips sink ships. And loose lipped Generals, even good ones, can sink their own careers. MacArthur was too much an egomaniac and deserved to be sacked even if he didn’t mouth off. He nearly got the U.S. Army wiped out on the fucking Yalu and wanted to start a nuclear war to cover his mistakes.

    I haven’t decided on Gen. Stan. I stopped writing this long enough to read the Rolling Stones article. I am not convinced this counterinsurgency stuff works unless you go in like Atilla the Hun crossed with the Romans at Carthage. Where has it worked? Its weird to be quoting Nixon: If you grab ’em by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow. Otherwise, they wait till you turn your back and then stick an IED up your ass.

    Mind you, I think we have sunk our military into yet another stupid, endless, and senseless quagmire (what is the Afghan translation of “Vietnamization?) but that goes with the territory of fighting political wars out of the White House basement. I guess McChrystal should be reaming out his superiors in private, not in the Rolling Stone.

    I don’t know. Chain of Command notwithstanding, I sure wouldn’t want to be leading Americans into that battlefield and have to look them in the eye every day as more shit hits the fan and troops are on their Nth deployment. This war has all the promise of an ugly hooker with AIDS. Anyone got a good idea? Or just a thicker condom and two brown bags.

  5. Three cups of tea. Only solution for this mess.

    If you’re trying to win political points, then come up with a cool name for a minor project of building a handful of schools and bridges. Track their progress closely, and when they’re done, pull out. Ship ’em school supplies, iPads and WiFi, declare victory, and bug out. Continue to pay as many people under the table as you can. Graft ain’t pretty, but sending cash is a lot cheaper in the short and long run than the VA bills we’re racking up, which are for life.

    I’m no insider, but i’ve been around GOs when political pressure was making folks do things they didn’t want to do. I watched around 30 full birds get handed their retirement papers from that dip shit Rumsfeld for disagreeing with him. And I spent some time with the Corps of Engineers during Katrina when they were getting beat up by all manners of congresscritters, folks who were more occupied with saving their own face and pointing fingers than actually fixing anything.

    And down to the last man, every one of them knew to keep his mouth shut about his civilian bosses, especially when reporters were in the room. What, did he think the Rolling Stone was going to cut him some slack and keep this to themselves?

    But Obama needs to be careful. If one soldier dies because of friction created during the transition of command as a replacement for McC is getting vetted, that’s going to be seen as an ego tax casualty. Everyone understands that civilians pay the bills, but the troops expect that check to come in the mail, not delivered in person by someone hovering over them. Guys who don’t give a fiddler’s fart about McC will still be pissed if he’s fired over politics and not performance.

  6. Yeah, Jesus, I wouldn’t talk to Rolling Stone about my taste in music, much less my thoughts about COIN, the Afghan war and civilian leadership in DeeCee. McChrystal really stepped on his dick here.

    These little cults of personality that spring up everywhere these days lead to delusional thinking (The Boss says it, so it must be true). After an overdose of groupthink one forgets that there are others out there with differing worldviews. The upshot can be behavior that’s the norm in the hive but stunningly insane outside of it.

    Thus you have Christian Bale berating some poor sap who wandered into his shot, Mel Gibson railing against the Jews, Lance Armstrong chasing down Filippo Simeoni, Ronnie Reagan joking about the bombing starting in five minutes, Daffy and Fudd calling an NYT journo a major-league asshole, and now McChrystal’s noisy little fart in church.

    Guys like this don’t live in the same world we do. They’re as alien as E.T., but not nearly as cute.

  7. Steve, insubordination would be about performance, not politics. But otherwise, point taken. As well as Patrick’s about people starting to listen to their own echo chamber.

    The problem I see is that this crash of cultures is unavoidable in a political war (and what war is not ultimately political). Soldiers think their job is to win wars the old fashioned way, by blowing things up and raising the flag. Politicians want to play politics and be seen in front of smiling Afghan faces. Presumably faces not sitting on quadruplegics, too. Meanwhile, your guy’s balls are in the wringer over there and you start to get upset with pols in DC playing chess with your cannon fodder. Even WW II had its political infighting. We had to stroke Monty’s dick to get his cooperation in France. Patton was furious that he was leashed and told not to take Berlin ahead of the Russians. War, of course, is politics by other means.

    As you say, cut to the chase and start building schools and bribing politicians. Would probably work just as well. Either way, the military-industrial complex gets its money, right?

  8. I don’t think BHO would be so tone deaf as to fire McC and have it look like he didn’t like a few stray comments floating around in Tiger Beat. The issue would be that McC lost control of his staff, that he allowed them to waste their time getting upset over personalities and not substance — specifically, wasting time bickering over personalities when they should be ironing out a workable strategy. That’s what the troops will be looking at: is it an issue of disagreement or discipline?

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