KABUL, Afghanistan — An angry President Obama summoned his top commander in Afghanistan to Washington on Tuesday after a magazine article portrayed the general and his staff as openly contemptuous of some senior members of the Obama administration.Read the rest here.
An administration official said the commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, would meet with President Obama and Vice President Biden at the White House on Wednesday “to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes in the piece,” which appears in the July 8-22 edition of Rolling Stone.
General McChrystal was scheduled to attend a monthly meeting on Afghanistan by teleconference, the official said, but was directed to return to Washington in light of the article. He apologized for his remarks, saying the article was “a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never have happened.”
The article shows General McChrystal or his aides talking in sharply derisive terms about Mr. Biden; Ambassador Karl Eikenberry; Richard C. Holbrooke, the special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan; and an unnamed minister in the French government. One of General McChrystal’s aides is quoted as referring to the national security adviser, James L. Jones, as a “clown.”
A senior administration official said Mr. Obama was furious about the article, particularly with the suggestion that he was uninterested and unprepared to discuss the Afghanistan war after he took office.
Bottom Line: If you are in the military you don't have to like your boss, but you do have to show respect for his rank or office. If you can't do that then it's time to find another job. The general should consider retirement.
4 comments:
I wonder what the reason is for being so outspoken. Perhaps Gen. McChrystal is tired of being ignored my the president?
Angela
"Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct." - Article 88 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ)
I agree the general should leave but commenting on the content of the statements is more fun.
Obama has very little life experience. The only product he's ever delivered to market, so to speak, is vague promises to spend other people's money. One sentence out of his entire speech on the BP spill discussed remediation, a passing reference to the status of the relief well. You think he's actually going to get out a legal pad, ask questions, take copious notes and read case studies on anything, much less an intractable Fourth Generation war in central Asia?
He's not a student of history, he has no executive experience, and his whole life has been spent uncritically swallowing Marxist tropes. The guy is in way over his head and he's got daddy issues, like his predecessor.
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