All this angst about what was said by who and when and where and what it means......mcchrystal deserved to be fired.....he has a big mouth, and maybe if he knew what he was doing the mess of Afghanistan left by bush would be getting better. After all, he got the additional troops he wanted, so just maybe he wasn't the person for the job. All in all the bottom line is george w bush left us with a real disaster in Afghanistan and it is time to cut our losses there, and in Iraq, and bring the troops home. This is a great article from NPR, and following is an article from Sojourners from 3DEZ09 calling for a new approach in Afghanistan......it is very timely in light of the events of the past few days.
Enlarge Charles Dharapak/AP President Obama stands with Gen. David Petraeus (right) and Vice President Biden on Wednesday in the Rose Garden as he announces that Petraeus will replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Charles Dharapak/AP
President Obama stands with Gen. David Petraeus (right) and Vice President Biden on Wednesday in the Rose Garden as he announces that Petraeus will replace Gen. Stanley McChrystal.
Obama promptly named a veteran commander, Gen. David Petraeus, to replace McChrystal in Afghanistan.
Petraeus, who may be the best-known general in America, served multiple tours in Iraq. He created the troop surge concept that many credit with bringing some measure of stability to Iraq — where he was in command of U.S. forces in 2007.
McChrystal did not attend a war conference that followed his Oval Office meeting with Obama and later released a statement citing his "desire to see the mission succeed" as the reason for his resignation.
Obama's Speech
"The war is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general, or a president," Obama said. "As difficult as it is to lose Gen. McChrystal, I believe it is the right decision for our national security."
Obama said McChrystal's scathing comments, published in Rolling Stone magazine, undermined civilian control of the military and eroded trust among the members of the president's war team.
Obama said he did not make the decision to accept McChrystal's resignation over any disagreement in policy or "out of any sense of personal insult."
He added firmly that he will not tolerate division on his team. "This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy," Obama emphasized, flanked by Vice President Biden, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Read The 'Rolling Stone' Article
"We think there is no one more qualified or more outstanding leader than Gen. Petraeus to achieve a successful conclusion of the Afghan conflict," said Sen. John McCain of Arizona, who spoke for himself as well as fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and independent Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut.
Petraeus enjoys widespread support on Capitol Hill and has established relationships with leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Among Troops In Afghanistan, A Sense Of Surprise
NPR's Tom Bowman, who watched the president's remarks with U.S. troops in Afghanistan, said McChrystal's firing was not necessarily expected there.
"The sense was among soldiers that this was not a firing offense — that McChrystal would likely get harshly criticized, taken to the woodshed in Washington and then returned to Kabul to run the war," Bowman told NPR's Michele Norris.
Bowman said that the appointment of Petraeus was also a surprise; troops had expected McChrystal's deputy, Lt. Gen. David Rodriguez, to take over.
McChrystal: Rapid Exit, Uncertain Future
McChrystal left the White House following his Oval Office call to accounts, and returned to his military quarters at Washington's Fort McNair.
Had he attended the previously planned Afghan strategy session in the White House Situation Room, he would have faced some of those colleagues that he and his aides had criticized in the magazine. Aides say Obama isn't bothered by honest debate, but he won't tolerate pettiness. He told his team members now is the time for them to come together.
Once the president says you've shown poor judgment, that is a classic case of lack of confidence, and that is a basic reason for release in the military.
A senior military official said there is no immediate decision about whether he would retire from the Army, which has been his entire career. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.
Obama had summoned McChrystal to Washington from Afghanistan after learning of the comments by the general and his inner circle about administration officials, including the president. The White House rebuke of McChrystal on Tuesday suggested that it would have been hard for him to give an explanation that would have been enough to save his job.
Before Petraeus can assume his new command, he has to be confirmed by the Senate. McCain suggested it might be the fastest confirmation hearing in history.
Petraeus: A 'Partner' In Afghanistan
Petraeus is currently the head of U.S. Central Command and McChrystal's direct superior.
At A Glance: Army Gen. David Petraeus
Born: Nov. 7, 1952; raised in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y.
Recent experience: Took over as head of U.S. Central Command in October 2008 after serving 19 months as the top American commander in Iraq during the troop "surge" to combat the insurgency there. Led the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and capture of Baghdad.
Education: U.S. Military Academy, 1974; Princeton University, master's degree in 1985, doctoral degree in 1987
Recent experience: Took over as head of U.S. Central Command in October 2008 after serving 19 months as the top American commander in Iraq during the troop "surge" to combat the insurgency there. Led the 101st Airborne Division during the 2003 invasion of Iraq and capture of Baghdad.
Education: U.S. Military Academy, 1974; Princeton University, master's degree in 1985, doctoral degree in 1987
Source: U.S. Central Command
And putting him in charge of the war has another benefit, says Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"It shows the Afghans the United States does not intend to leave — that it is going to be a partner," Cordesman said.
The 57-year-old Petraeus has a good reputation among members of the Obama administration. He's considered the architect of the 2007 surge in Iraq and is credited with harnessing sectarian bloodshed there.
Petraeus is widely credited with creating the counterinsurgency strategy that both McChrystal and Obama say will win the war.
NATO officials said that despite the military shakeup, they will continue to support that strategy.
McChrystal had run the war in Afghanistan for a year, bolstered by tens of thousands of additional U.S. troops.
But it's a critical time in the war. An effort to retake Kandahar City from the Taliban has stalled and more of the U.S.'s NATO allies have said they will withdraw at the end of next year. Meanwhile, the death toll for American soldiers and Marines is growing.
Article's Author Expresses Surprise
The author of the Rolling Stone article, "The Runaway General," on Tuesday night told NPR's All Things Considered that he was surprised that his story had raised such a ruckus. Journalist Michael Hastings said he remembered being shocked by the general's candor and outspokenness during the interviews, but he did not anticipate the hullabaloo the article has caused.
Hastings said that, while he could only speculate about what motivated McChrystal and his aides to say what they did, he guessed that they might have wanted "to throw a hand grenade into the pond and create some shockwaves," to get more people to pay attention to the war in Afghanistan.
Timeline: Afghanistan And The U.S.
Mario Tama/Getty Images From the U.S. invasion in 2001 through President Obama's ouster of top U.S. commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal, trace important moments in one of America's longest-running wars.
McChrystal didn't criticize Obama himself in the magazine article but called the period last fall when the president was deciding whether to approve more troops "painful" and said Obama appeared ready to hand him an "unsellable" position.
McChrystal also said he was "betrayed" by Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner in Afghanistan. He accused Eikenberry of raising doubts about Karzai only to give himself cover in case the U.S. effort failed. "Now, if we fail, they can say 'I told you so,' " McChrystal told the magazine. And he was quoted mocking Biden.
If not insubordination, the remarks — as well as even sharper commentary about Obama and his White House from several in McChrystal's inner circle — were at least an indirect and extraordinary challenge and one that consumed Washington. The capital hasn't seen a similar public contretemps between a president and a top wartime commander since Harry Truman stripped Gen. Douglas MacArthur of his command more than a half-century ago after disagreements over Korean War strategy.
It was an important moment for the president, who otherwise ran the risk of looking like he couldn't command his generals. Obama took a moment to praise McChrystal for his service and his intelligence, but he said in airing his grievances with Rolling Stone, McChrystal had broken the strict code of conduct required of everyone in uniform.
Notably, neither McChrystal nor his team questioned the accuracy of the story or the quotes in it. McChrystal issued an apology.
"The comments are certainly egregious," said Nathaniel Fick, of the Center for a New American Security, on Wednesday's Morning Edition. "They're reprehensible and unforgivable. But I'd make the point that if you caught some NSC staffers or people on the vice president's staff sitting around on a Saturday night with a bottle of scotch, you'd hear a lot of the same things, but the guns would be pointed in a different direction."
Still, military leaders rarely challenge their commanders in chief publicly. When they do, consequences tend to be more severe than a scolding.
"Once the president says you've shown poor judgment, that is a classic case of lack of confidence, and that is a basic reason for release in the military," said Tom Ricks, also of the Center for a New American Security. "When you lose confidence in a subordinate, you're obliged to relieve them — if only as a matter of obligation to the troops underneath that person."
McChrystal was viewed as a visionary with the guts and smarts to turn around the beleaguered Afghanistan war when he was chosen to take over last year. But despite his military achievements, he has a history of making waves.
This is not his first brush with Obama's anger. Last fall, the president scolded McChrystal for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.
Ricks noted on Morning Edition that leaving McChrystal in place would send "a very poor message to the troops about discipline and judgment."
"The troops have a term — 'different spanks for different ranks' — in which they suspect that generals get away with stuff that corporals don't get away with," Ricks said. "And the message here that Obama needs to send is, 'No, the entire military is subordinate to me and must show good judgment and discipline."
With reporting from NPR's Rachel Martin, Tom Bowman, Scott Horsley, JJ Sutherland, Jackie Northam, Diana Douglass, Corey Flintoff and Teri Schultz and material from The Associated Press
We Needed a New Approach in Afghanistan -- and This Isn’t It
The decision by President Obama to send additional troops to Afghanistan saddens me. I believe it is a mistake, it is the wrong direction for U.S. foreign policy, and it is disappointing to many of us in the faith community and our friends who spearhead the on-the-ground development efforts in Afghanistan and around the world.
We needed a new approach to the very difficult and complicated situation in Afghanistan, and this isn’t it. We were promised fundamental change in the direction of U.S. policy around the world, and this isn’t it. We were promised change we can believe in, and this military escalation is not something many of us as faith leaders can believe in. This is still a primary reliance on military solutions and occupations to defeat terrorism -- a strategy which has not succeeded. The defeat of violent extremism is a necessary goal of the international community -- but old thinking, old ideas, old strategies, have failed time and time again to do that. And we have no reason to believe it will succeed this time.
Two weeks ago, we delivered to the White House an open letter to the president calling on him to lead with a different kind of “surge” -- a surge of strategic and focused international development, diplomacy, and targeted humanitarian assistance (and, yes, the necessary security to support it), rather than again relying on more military escalation. Seventeen thousand people have signed on to that letter. We heard little of that new approach in this announcement of sending more troops to fight terrorism. To undermine, isolate, and roll back the influence, capacity, and power of groups like al Qaeda is a necessary goal, but we still fail to fully comprehend how the presence and consequences of foreign military power serve to strengthen the extremism we seek to weaken. The plan that the president announced last evening is still the wrong kind of surge, and the emphasis of this policy is still in the wrong place. The history of the troubled country of Afghanistan, the lack of a reliable governance partner, the absolute failure of every other occupation of that nation, and the consistent mistake of leading with military solutions all predict sad outcomes for this old approach. Our nation’s growing skepticism about this war is well-founded.
Ultimately, only a whole new approach to Afghanistan will have any chance of success. And many of us will continue to call for that, in the hope that the Obama administration will eventually listen. In the meantime, we will pray for our servicemen and women who will continue to sacrifice for a tragic strategy, for more innocent civilians in Afghanistan who will die from more military escalation, for a president whose deepest instincts we still trust, and for the soul of our own nation. May God save us from our well-intentioned mistakes.
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We needed a new approach to the very difficult and complicated situation in Afghanistan, and this isn’t it. We were promised fundamental change in the direction of U.S. policy around the world, and this isn’t it. We were promised change we can believe in, and this military escalation is not something many of us as faith leaders can believe in. This is still a primary reliance on military solutions and occupations to defeat terrorism -- a strategy which has not succeeded. The defeat of violent extremism is a necessary goal of the international community -- but old thinking, old ideas, old strategies, have failed time and time again to do that. And we have no reason to believe it will succeed this time.
Two weeks ago, we delivered to the White House an open letter to the president calling on him to lead with a different kind of “surge” -- a surge of strategic and focused international development, diplomacy, and targeted humanitarian assistance (and, yes, the necessary security to support it), rather than again relying on more military escalation. Seventeen thousand people have signed on to that letter. We heard little of that new approach in this announcement of sending more troops to fight terrorism. To undermine, isolate, and roll back the influence, capacity, and power of groups like al Qaeda is a necessary goal, but we still fail to fully comprehend how the presence and consequences of foreign military power serve to strengthen the extremism we seek to weaken. The plan that the president announced last evening is still the wrong kind of surge, and the emphasis of this policy is still in the wrong place. The history of the troubled country of Afghanistan, the lack of a reliable governance partner, the absolute failure of every other occupation of that nation, and the consistent mistake of leading with military solutions all predict sad outcomes for this old approach. Our nation’s growing skepticism about this war is well-founded.
Ultimately, only a whole new approach to Afghanistan will have any chance of success. And many of us will continue to call for that, in the hope that the Obama administration will eventually listen. In the meantime, we will pray for our servicemen and women who will continue to sacrifice for a tragic strategy, for more innocent civilians in Afghanistan who will die from more military escalation, for a president whose deepest instincts we still trust, and for the soul of our own nation. May God save us from our well-intentioned mistakes.
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