It is against this backdrop that General McChrystal was abruptly and summarily relieved of his dual command over U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) and NATO's International Security Assistance Force (ISAF).
After a 30-minute tà ªte-à -tà ªte with McChrystal, then a war council with Vice President Joseph Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen, National Security Advisor James Jones and White House Chief of Staff and in many respects grey eminence Rahm Emanuel, President Obama stood behind a podium in the White House Rose Garden and announced McChrystal was not to return to Afghanistan as commander of U.S. and NATO forces.
His career had ended the way his predecessor's, Army General David McKiernan, had a year before: He was unceremoniously deposed.
Flanked on both sides by Mullen, Biden, Gates and McChrystal's hastily appointed successor General David Petraeus, Obama characterized the sacking of the Afghan war's military chief as a resignation, the public relations equivalent of leaving a loaded revolver on the desk of a discredited subordinate.
The uptake of the American commander-in-chief's address was contained in two sentences: "The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system." In fact the piece in question would not be published for another two days.
He was referring to leaked excerpts from a Rolling Stone magazine feature on McChrystal and several of his aides, in particular off-the-cuff comments by aides as well as McChrystal, including ones uttered during a bibulous bus ride from Paris to Berlin in April. Wine keeps neither secrets nor promises as Beaumarchais observed.
Members of the establishment press corps (consumed with envy at not scooping the scandalous quotes themselves) scrambled for a thesaurus to characterize McChrystal and company's less than flattering word portraits of Biden, U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan Karl Eikenberry and White House Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke as intemperate, indiscreet, impolitic and so on down the list. Recall that their indignation was provoked by assorted obiter dicta issued on the wing and on the run over a month-long period. Being unenthusiastic about opening emails from Richard Holbrooke is not a crime of lese majestà ©, of high treason.
Along the lines of Obama's reference to maintaining civilian control of the military, mainstream political analysts and commentators made strained allusions to Abraham Lincoln's firing of General George McClellan during the American Civil War and Harry Truman's cashiering General Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War.
The freelance reporter whose story was the occasion for McChrystal's departure, Michael Hastings, said after the dismissal that "he believed the story would last for 72 hours and then McChrystal and his staff would get back to business as usual." [3]
Not so much a matter of changing commanders in midstream as it is throwing overboard the captain of a ship threatened with being capsized in a tempest.
That the commander of all foreign military forces in the world's most extensive military conflict, one that involves over 50 nations [4] on six continents and will shortly reach its ninth year, would be dismissed within two days of a leaked report from an entertainment magazine (two days before its publication) is to all outward appearances a dramatically disproportionate response, one that itself could be branded intemperate.
There were and are other, more substantial, dynamics at play.
Another American general who left his last post under a cloud, former U.S. European Command chief and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark - never one to be shy of the limelight or a television camera - appeared on CNN the evening of McChrystal being dumped and dutifully echoed the official post-purge position: "I think that there are lines you can't cross and I think there's responsibilities that you have to uphold as a senior commander."
In reference to Central Command head David Petraeus taking charge of 150,000 U.S. and NATO (and in truth what there is of an Afghan National Army) troops, Clark added a revealing item which may prove to be the main intention behind and result of McChrystal's dismissal: "I don't know what the timetable means. Whether it means you've got to pull a brigade out or four brigades out or half the troops out or, you know, an outpost out, I'm not quite clear."[5]
With mid-term congressional elections in early November and Obama's presumed reelection bid two years later, Petraeus' appointment may have a distinctly political dimension. Either simply an effort to put a new face on a disastrous affair or to signal a shift in war tactics. But if meant to boost the election prospects of Democratic candidates this year and Obama in 2012, the White House may get more than it bargained for.
A graduate of the West Point Military Academy like McChrystal, Petraeus has been the subject of rumours - for at least three years - that he intends to run for the U.S. presidency, and in fact has been deftly positioning himself for just that eventuality.
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