By now, you've no doubt caught wind of the fracas surrounding comments by Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his top aides disparaging high-ranking government officials, and perhaps learned that they do not seem to be technically insubordinate. Spencer Ackerman notes, "There’s no complaints from McChrystal or his staff about the administration on any substantive ground. After all, McChrystal and his allies won the argument within the White House."
That's what makes me angriest about this whole episode. McChrystal and his team get the full support of President Obama and the administration -- over and against his own political base and with little real help from the Republican opposition -- on a strategy that even military officials concede is the least-worst approach to the conflict, and this is how the military rewards the confidence of civilian leadership?
More problematically, at the heart of McChrystal's approach is a relatively seamless integration of civilian and military forces to execute a strategy premised as much on development and state-building as it is on traditional -- or even un-traditional -- military operations. But if members of the general's staff can't seem to work productively with top civilian officials, how can they expect soldiers on the ground to collaborate with their USAID and State Department colleagues?
There are already credible voices saying that McChrystal should be fired. I don't have enough current knowledge of the conflict to know if removing the loose-lipped general would be too detrimental to the war effort, but I do wonder if there may be a silver lining to this dark cloud: Perhaps President Obama has an opportunity to once again reassess this conflict and reconsider his options absent a single figure who has personalized the conflict.
-- Tim Fernholz
