Comments on: To Fire or Not to Fire McChrystal? That’s NOT the Question!

By: Martin

Martin — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 18:07:09 +0000

Looks like I was wrong. President Obama chose the thin-skinned option.

Matt, yours is a really prescient write-up, on a day when most of us are still reeling from the rank idiocy of yesterday’s media gossip. I think this is what you can safely call a “bad news day.” Washington’s propensity for self-annihilation on display again. Oh, and by the way, a robot meanwhile collided with the Gulf pipeline cap. They’ve been forced to remove it, and we’re back to square one, with the gusher at full intensity — 30,000 barrels a day or more.

Personally, I agree with Jack. He’ll have to seize on this scandal to make the tough call, and cutting bait would be the least-worst option. He could stay the course in Afghanistan, as there are other competent (and now chastened) generals.

The irony is that McCrystal is actually right. Holbrooke has chosen the path of being a Clinton loyalist and only knows how to be a bull in the china shop, while Jones has always seemed to me to be an old-school thinker. (His last job before his new post was as an oil consultant.)

The COIN plan is genuinely as well conceived as any plan the armed forces has come up with since Vietnam. But keep in mind, “snafu” is a term coined by the military. McCrystal’s own trash-talk is par for the course in the ranks. (Has it ever really been a gentleman’s profession?) And there’s no way to rid the armed services of that sort of arrogant disdain. Civilian leaders have to work with it, and help them fix their own mess. (Ask Bob Gates.)

One of the qualities that people most trust about President Obama is the ability to take the pressure in stride. Yet the media is about to steamroll him, because the country wanted a responsible, caretaker President to clean up after the last administration, and this is a landscape of screw-ups that has little directly to do with the Bush era.

Matt, what I’m taking from your analysis is that this is the proverbial “test of a President’s leadership.” It’s in this kind of fast-breaking, frayed policy climate that the President’s calm will usually be (mis)characterized as weakness — as distance or naivete.

More dirty laundry will be aired before it’s over. Hillary will be too tainted by this turn of events to run successfully against Obama in 2012.

By: Matthew Dickinson

Matthew Dickinson — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:24:21 +0000

Jack – The problem with your scenario is that there’s nothing in McChrystal’s comments (or those of his aides) that speaks to a policy dispute with Obama – indeed, the thrust of the comments are all personal (and mostly directed at Obama’s national security team.) In short, even if McChrystal is fired, there’s no easy way to link it to a change in policy without making Obama look bad. What’s Obama going to say? “McChrystal’s comments are insubordinate, and by the way, in a related issue, I screwed up six months ago and now want to reverse course in Afghanistan”? Far better to separate McChrystal’s comments from any policy decision, lest Obama feed the perception that his military strategy is driven by a thin-skinned response to some locker room indiscretions.

I’ve written before about the one far-fetched scenario in which Hillary challenges Obama in 2012 – disagreement over Afghanistan was one of the precipitating factors. I predict she says nothing publicly beyond the boilerplate “I support the President” – the smart thing to do.

By: Jack Goodman

Jack Goodman — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:11:03 +0000

Matt, I have to disagree with your conclusion. Firing McChrystal is both fundamental to Obama his showing he can make the tough decisions a leader needs to make and to changing his Afghan policy. Once McChyrstal is gone, Obama can send his “own team” of generals over to Afghanistan to make new recommendations that will provide a an early exit strategy. No one has yet been able to answer the question of what a victory in Afghanistan looks like. To me, it looks like getting the hell out of there before the current policy collapses. A golden opportunity for Obama to show he is a tough leader and to correct a mistaken foreign policy. Question: What will Hillary say?