Gen. Stanley McChrystal has been summoned to the The White House for another lecture from the President about insubordination. For those who missed webranding's diary, McChrystal and his staff had some very disrespectful things to say about the administration and the President in a recent Rolling Stone article.
The last time McChrystal went to the media directly, President Obama got really mad, and personally told the General so:
Did White House give a dressing-down to Gen. McChrystal for publicly objecting to new strategy?
October 5, 2009-It started in London last week, when Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who heads U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan, told an audience at the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that he does not support a new military strategy being floated privately by Vice President Joe Biden.
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During his remarks in London, McChrystal predicted that such a plan was "short-sighted," that it would produce "Chaos-istan" and that he would not support it.
Now, London's Telegraph is reporting that White House advisers were "shocked and angered" by the bluntness of McChrystal's remarks and noting that the very next day President Obama summoned the general for a 25-minute, one-on-one meeting aboard Air Force One as it sat on the runway in Copenhagen after the president's unsuccessful bid to win the 2016 Olympics for Chicago.
It's not clear what the President would have McChrystal do, after, all the General did try to let his views on the matter known indirectly, but no one paid attention:
The McChrystal Report
September 21, 2009 ...
What's provocative about the report is that it was leaked to Woodward--a serious breach of conduct by someone, possibly in the military (or a supporter the military's position). This was an effort to lobby a quick decision on troop strength--which the military wants, so that it can begin planning the 2010 fighting season in Afghanistan. But a quick decision is not a good idea right now.
All sarcasm aside, the administration knew what McChrystal was when they selected him for the job, but for some reason ignored the elephant in the room.
The Hidden General
Jun 26, 2006-No one would have mentioned his name at all if President George W. Bush hadn't singled him out in public. Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, West Point '76, is not someone the Army likes to talk about. He isn't even listed in the directory at Fort Bragg, N.C., his home base. That's not because McChrystal has done anything wrong--quite the contrary, he's one of the Army's rising stars--but because he runs the most secretive force in the U.S. military. That is the Joint Special Operations Command, the snake-eating, slit-their-throats "black ops" guys who captured Saddam Hussein and targeted Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi.
JSOC is part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to "work the dark side" after 9/11. To many critics, the veep's remark back in 2001 fostered his rep as the Darth Vader of the war on terror and presaged bad things to come, like the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But America also has its share of Jedi Knights who are fighting in what Cheney calls "the shadows." And McChrystal, an affable but tough Army Ranger, and the Delta Force and other elite teams he commands are among them.
Translation:
Commander's Intent: Lt. General Stanley McChrystal
He has reported in the New Yorker that these units were given the authority to track and kill terrorists with minimal oversight, and that special interrogation task forces organized under a program called "Copper Green" were given a green light to use harsh, unapproved interrogation methods against detainees. The Copper Green program might be the Pentagon' equivalent to the CIA's "GST" umbrella, the covert series of rendition, collection and interrogation programs that are being widely debated in Congress right now. Hersh calls McChrystal the leader of[these "executive assassination" unit and promises to reveal more in the future. One can accept the basic truth of Hersh's allegation -- that Delta Force and Seal Team Six killed lots of insurgents under a broad classified authority granted to them by the Bush administration -- without thinking that the actions were somehow wrong or suspect. On the other hand, if the authority was granted illegally, if the targets were not terrorists... well, then JSOC will have a problem. We will see.
When Obama allowed so many former loyal Bushies (or in this case a loyal "Cheneyite") to continue in his administration, and even promoted people like McChrystal, the hardest part to understand is why Obama believed the holdovers wouldn't undermine his new government. Never mind the impossibly of fundamental policy change with a staff composed of so many who fundamentally disagree with a shift in direction, how can Obama operate any policy with people who managed a rouge state?