Military Insubordination or Administrative Incompetence?

The important issue prompted by the current Rolling Stone article isn’t Gen. McChrystal’s defiance or rank insubordination. It’s the announced deadline for troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, an insane move that guarantees defeat, as well as other war-losing moves. Would you ally yourself with foreign forces that you know are going to exit, and the day they do, you know you and your family will be beheaded? All the talk about whether Obama firing McChrystal is a sideshow important to the Leftist media because they want Obama to look tough. But bad war-running from the oval office will continue a path to defeat. The real question is whether we are going to stop telegraphing our intentions to the enemy and get serious about the enemy.

The administration won’t even define the enemy beyond saying Al Queda. Al Queda? What’s Al Queda? A bunch of guys in caves who drill in the desert? Is that our only enemy? If we eliminate them, is the war won? Who does the administration think they are kidding? The real enemy is a religious philosophy held by extremist Muslims which says anyone who doesn’t believe as they do should yield or die. Not every Muslim believes that, but so what? Enough do that they have decimated our greatest city, killed thousands of our citizens, made giant inroads in occupying Europe and are plotting more death and destruction everywhere. Saying we’re fighting Al Queda is like saying we were fighting the Nazi SS in WWII.

I have not yet read the Rolling Stone article on McChrystal. To listen to the mainstream media, I don’t have to. He’s committed a crime almost as bad as BP. Not quite as bad as racism, but close. In my mind, he’s done what any good commander would do. When pushed, he’s told the truth. We’re in big trouble. American soldiers are dying in Afghanistan and the administration which sends them there doesn’t know, or want to know, how to win.

How could they? They don’t like the military. Few, like in Congress, have served in it. The commander in the field asks for 40,000 troops and gets 20,000. That’s support? Enemy combatants are given rights as if they were American citizens and administration-ruled Pentagon lawyers prowl military operations looking for violations of enemy rights. At best, McChrystal is guilty of bad public relations. He gave another militarily-hostile entity – Rolling Stone – access. They crucified him. I guess he should have known better. Even his friends are saying bad judgment. This is the world we live in. Nobody tells the truth to the public – especially those in Washington. Yes, it’s a breach of military etiquette to publicly air dirty laundry. But there also comes a time when good men have to stand up.

In the late 1940s, a group of US admirals resigned or were fired after publicly clashing with the president and pentagon over the role of nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers. The pentagon felt nuclear bombers made the carriers obsolete. The admirals thought that was tactically and morally wrong. Nuking should be a last option. They were proved right as the carrier became the implement of American might. McChrystal is in much the same position. Whatever his motives and indiscretion, he’s fighting a battle with much against him. If the administration doesn’t get serious about the war, it is probably lost whatever they do to him. Whoever replaces him will have the same problems. Politicians – not soldiers – lost Vietnam. It is happening again. The enemy knows exactly what to do in this situation. Wait until the announced troop withdrawal occurs and fill the vacuum. That is the real problem the Rolling Stone article points up.