Slightly Hilarious: McChrystal Bans Fox News

Didn't we think the exemplary rock-solid, magnificent warrior, General Stanley McChrystal was surely a conservative? Before the Rolling Stone article, did you assume the General was not happy with the COIN strategy of insurgency, largely meaning "winning the hearts and minds of the Afghan people?" Wouldn't you think the mighty General commanding the Afghanistan war would want his troops to have a supportive view from back home of the war they are fighting? Did you know that around McChrystal's headquarters, he banned Fox News? Apparently, Chris Matthews, Keith Olbermann, Katie Couric, Diane Sawyer, and maybe - Christiane Amanpour are his kind of war reporters.

Stanley McChrystal

Not only is the hearing of free speech denied, but junk food as well - although I want to make it clear that pizza must not...cannot, be defined as "junk food," and to do so is heresy:

General Stanley McChrystal, the former commander of Special Forces in Iraq, who runs eight miles a day, eats one meal and sleeps for only four hours a night, has given orders to close the junk food concessions on Nato bases.

No longer will the fighter pilots at Bagram or Kandahar airfields be able to ring Pizza Hut to deliver. Once General McChrystal has his way, the Whoppers will be off the menu: Burger Kings at both locations are to close. Even the newly opened TGI Friday’s on the boardwalk in Kandahar is to close its doors once its contract expires.

So, our "other" valiant warriors, out there fighting a deadly war to protect the locals, at the expense of their own lives, cannot decide on their own nourishment. If the mess hall is providing nourishing meals, why not give the troops the choice of food and news? Ah...the answer: a Liberal General thinks them incapable.

Marc Ambinder confirms that General McChrystal's vote for the president helped bring this dreadful administration to the White House:

Even more about McChrystal: now it can be told. The story about him voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters. Yes, really. This puts to rest another false rumor: that McChrystal deliberately precipitated his firing because he wants to run for President.

When the Rolling Stone article broke, I expressed dismay that this fine General could approve of this version of COIN. As I began researching the Rules of Engagement for Afghanistan, who wrote them, and who supported them, I could not eliminate McChrystal from the column of enthusiastic supporters. Today we know that he and Obama were joined at the hip. The Lonely Conservative has more.

Obama Transcript on Resignation and Attempted Humiliation of General Stanley McChrystal

The following are snippets of Obama's statement on the resignation of General Stanley McChrystal. The POTUS teleprompter went well until he decided he would not miss this opportunity to humiliate the General:

Barack Obama

Today I accepted General Stanley McChrystal's resignation as commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan. I did so with considerable regret, but also with certainty that it is the right thing for our mission in Afghanistan, for our military, and for our country. 

I'm also pleased to nominate General David Petraeus to take command in Afghanistan, which will allow us to maintain the momentum and leadership that we need to succeed. 

I don't make this decision based on any difference in policy with General McChrystal, as we are in full agreement about our strategy. Nor do I make this decision out of any sense of personal insult. Stan McChrystal has always shown great courtesy and carried out my orders faithfully. I've got great admiration for him and for his long record of service in uniform. 

Over the last nine years, with America fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, he has earned a reputation as one of our nation's finest soldiers. That reputation is founded upon his extraordinary dedication, his deep intelligence and his love of country. 

I've relied on his service, particularly in helping to design and lead our new strategy in Afghanistan. 

So all Americans should be grateful for General McChrystal's remarkable career in uniform. 

But war is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a private, a general or a president. And as difficult as it is to lose General McChrystal, I believe that it is the right decision for our national security. 

Praise for the General and then wield the petty presidential saber quickly. Obama had to attempt to humilitate:

The conduct represented in the recently published article does not meet the standard that should be set by a commanding general. 

It undermines the civilian control of the military that is at the core of our democratic system. And it erodes the trust that's necessary for our team to work together to achieve our objectives in Afghanistan....

I've just told my national security team that now is the time for all of us to come together. Doing so is not an option but an obligation. I welcome debate among my team, but I won't tolerate division...

How many times have we heard our monarchial president use the word "tolerate?" Here are a few:

1) About the Bush policy on perceived "torture." The U.S. will not tolerate torture...

2) Setting Executive Pay Limits: For top executives to award themselves these kinds of compensation packages in the midst of this economic crisis isn't just bad taste -- it's a bad strategy -- and I will not tolerate it.

3) About the Christmas Day Underpant Bomber, Obama said: While there will be a tendency for finger pointing, I will not tolerate it.

4) Connecting the dots on the Christmas Day bomber: Intelligence failing to connect the dots, Obama called it unacceptable: I will not tolerate it.

5) About Israel: We must never tolerate the hateful stereotypes and prejudice against the Jewish people... (...but in fact we know, that he simply cannot tolerate Israel).

6) About the BP oil spill, speaking about BP and Transocean - the "ridiculous spectacle" of the two companies blaming each other, and their cozy relationship: "I will not tolerate more finger pointing or irresponsibility

Obama went on to talk about his unwavering support for our Military and announced the nomination of General David Petraeus for Commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan.


Read the entire article here.


Linked by The Lonely Conservative - thanks Karen!

McChrystal Leaves White House Without Attending Obama's National Security Meeting

Obama and General Stanley McChrystal met for about 30 minutes this morning. McChrystal left the White House after the meeting, rather than staying for  the President's monthly National Security meeting, beginning at 11 a.m. EDT.  Fox is watching this closely and there are no reports that the General came back to the White House. Surely, the General would not have missed that meeting. Assuming McChrystal is no longer in charge of Afghanistan, I hope he showed up with his resignation in hand.

Stanley McChrystal Rolling Stone Mag: McChrystal Comes to Washington for Dress-Down or Firing

General McChrystal gave a Rolling Stone Magazine freelancer unprecedented access to the every day life of fighting the war in Afghanistan. Apparently, the writer 'came, saw, listened and wrote' and  McChrystal is now the target of Obama's wrath for some very cheeky and disrespectful remarks he and his top senior aides made. McChrystal will face his Commander-in-Chief and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at a meeting of the administration's monthly Security Team meeting - today. By the way, Rolling Stone tells us that McChrystal voted for Barack Obama. See an important update below.

General Stanley McChrystal

The writer of the Rolling Stone piece, Michael Hastings, accompanied McChrystal to an out-post in the Kandahar area of Afghanistan. A 23-year-old soldier had just died as he entered a booby-trapped home.
Unit Commanders sought permission to blow-up the property, and that permission was denied:

One soldier at the outpost showed Hastings, who was traveling with the general, a written directive instructing troops to "patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will have to defend yourself with lethal force.

During a tense meeting with Ingram's platoon, one sergeant tells McChrystal: "Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we're losing, sir."

This from Washington Post writers Londono and Shear (linked above):

McChrystal has championed a counterinsurgency strategy that prioritizes protecting the population as a means to marginalize and ultimately defeat the insurgency. Because new rules sharply restrict the circumstances under which air strikes and other lethal operation that have resulted in civilian casualties can be conducted, some soldiers say the strategy has left them more exposed.

So as  McChrystal let loose, and let fly, we know our troops are not fighting a war, rather they are commanded to "win the hearts and minds of the locals" and they are dying at an astonishing rate. Is this the way McChrystal wants to fight this war, or is this his best effort considering restriction placed on him by the Obama administration?

We ask what McChrystal was thinking when jokes were made about Joe Biden (who is uniquely qualified to be joked about), when he said meeting with Obama was "disappointing," the President of the United States was "unprepared," and is quoted saying National Security Adviser Jim Jones is a "clown," "stuck in 1985."

We are told McChrystal is "uniquely qualified" to lead our troops in that mean country, but is Barack Obama "uniquely qualified" to command McChrystal?

The article, titled “The Runaway General,” appears in the magazine later this week. It contains a number of jabs by McChrystal and his staff aimed not only at the President but at Vice President Biden, special envoy Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry, the ambassador to Afghanistan, and others.

McChrystal described his first meeting with Obama as disappointing and said that Obama was unprepared for the meeting. National Security Advisor Jim Jones is described by a McChrystal aide as a “clown” stuck in 1985. Others aides joked about Biden’s last name as sounding like “Bite me” since Biden opposed the surge

The media is calling for his head. Senator John Kerry, just minutes ago said nothing is more important than our mission in Afghanistan, and he advises everyone to stay cool and calm for at least a couple of days. In other words, he seems not to recommend an immediate firing. He is not alone in his opinion.

In a day and time when 17 Afghanistan pilots can be brought to the U.S. and allowed to disappear into the heart of America, and the administrative arm of the U.S. Air Force sees it as an "immigration" problem, I think we have a huge problem. Winning the hearts and minds of Muslims in a Muslim country centuries behind the rest of the world, who hang 7-year-old-boys is not going to happen. What was and is Stanley McChrystal thinking?

So what do you think? Will McChrystal be fired or only humiliated? Who knows, maybe McChrystal will quit. I think he is beyond frustrated. Any real soldier would be.

Update 6-22-12:55 a.m. EDT:

Generals run war according to the Rules of Engagement (ROE) written for a specific engagement. So if things are not going swell in Afghanistan, who wrote the rules of engagement? It appears that McChrystal and the Pentagon came up with winning the hearts and minds of the people, perhaps after Obama made it clear that that was his goal.

Going back to September 2009:

U.S. forces have been told to exercise extreme caution before ordering airstrikes.

By exercising so much restraint, the U.S. military may sacrifice a key firepower advantage on the battlefield and expose ground troops to more risk, some officers and analysts say.

"There is a tradeoff," said Col. Gian Gentile, a former battalion commander in Iraq who has publicly criticized counterinsurgency doctrine. "You reduce civilian casualties, but you potentially increase your own casualties."

Doug Macgregor, a retired Army colonel and military historian, says the emphasis on having conventional forces trying to win over the population is futile.

"You surrender whatever military advantage you have by compelling the U.S. conventional soldier or Marine to fight on terms that favor the enemy, not the American soldier or Marine," Macgregor said.

From George Will June 20, 2010, tells of Officers requesting permission to hit a location, and that permission being denied - Americans died:

"There were villagers laughing at the U.S. casualties" and "two suspicious individuals were seen fleeing the scene and entering a home."

U.S. forces "are no longer allowed to search homes without Afghan National Security Forces personnel present." But when his unit asked Afghan police to search the house, the police refused on the grounds that the people in the house "are good people." 

Another example from Will, when a unit asked for artillery fire on an enemy position and that request was denied, they asked for permission for a "smoke mission," firing an "illumination round" that shows an enemy position.

This request was granted -- but because of fear of collateral damage, the round was deliberately fired one kilometer off the requested site, making "the smoke mission useless and leaving us to fend for ourselves."  

Sweetness and Light posts the entire Rolling Stone article. The following seems to shed a lot of light on the "rules of engagement:

From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military’s preference for high tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation’s government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve.

The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested the theory during his “surge” in Iraq, it quickly gained a hardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, military officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed “COIN-dinistas” for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it. As McChrystal leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, he did it with the same fearlessness he used to track down terrorists in Iraq: Figure out how your enemy operates, be faster and more ruthless than everybody else, then take the fuckers out.

And this look at McChrystal's viewpoint in September 2009:

 "What I'm really telling people is the greatest risk we can accept is to lose the support of the people here," Gen. Stanley McChrystal told CBS's "60 Minutes" in an interview aired Sunday night.

"If the people are against us, we cannot be successful. If the people view us as occupiers and the enemy, we can't be successful and our casualties will go up dramatically."

So the question is, how's that working out for you? We know how it's working out for the troops.

h/t FloppingAces

Related and Background:
Obama Repeats Mistakes in Afghanistan: Purposeless Engagement 

Marines in Afghanistan - A Death Run Every Day

Taliban Siraj Haqqani Rape Murder Tape


Linked by:
 Reaganite Republican with a round of what others are saying.

Caught Him with a Corndog has a Jeff Duntz perspective on what McChrystal did and is doing.

Barbara Boxer not Going to send the troops in: Abdullah Abdullah Quits Obama Silent

Senator Barbara Boxer tells Fox, "No, I'm not going to send the troops in," and Hamid Karzai's opponent in Afghanistan, Abdullah Abdullah quits his opposition election bid. Obama is silent on General McChrystal's request for at least 40,000 more troops. See video blow.

The administration's stall on a decision for troop escalation no longer depends on Afghanistan election results. What's next?

Hat tip to Hot Air

Barbara Boxer - Not going to send the troops in (video)

American Troops Depressed, Disillusioned: US Troops Demoralized

In the midst of the worst fighting of the War on Terror, emotions are raw and feelings conflicted. American forces in Afghanistan are said to be depressed, disillusioned and demoralized. Two chaplains of the 10th Mountain Division's 2-87 Infantry Battalion and the 4-25 Field Artillery Battalion are speaking out, because they say, their men cannot.

After multiple deployments to Afghanistan, the divorce rate is skyrocketing and soldiers are said to no longer care whether they are helping Afghanis.

The inane "rules of engagement" that keep troops from doing their job and getting back home are a part of the depression. According to the TimesOnline.com:

The soldiers joke that their Isaf arm badges stand not for International Security Assistance Force but “I Suck At Fighting” or “I Support Afghan Farmers”.

If that isn't depressing, then what is? Everyday we hear that the fighting happens only after a certain set of conditions are met. Until then, the troops watch the activity nearby and are ordered to do nothing.

They’re a joke,” said one. “You get shot at but can do nothing about it. You have to see the person with the weapon. It’s not enough to know which house the shooting’s coming from.”

The Chaplains are frustrated and having difficulty coping themselves. Captain Jeff Masengale  2-87 Infantry Battalion says it "is all pain:"

Captain Masengale, a soldier for 12 years before he became a chaplain, said: “We want to believe in a cause but we don’t know what that cause is.”

That coming from a 12 year veteran, and a chaplain. This from a Lieutenant:

“The average soldier sees a friend blown up and his instinct is to retaliate or believe it’s for something [worthwhile], but it’s not like other wars where your buddy died but they took the hill. There’s no tangible reward for the sacrifice. It’s hard to say Wardak is better than when we got here.”

 From a Sergeant:

...has lost six colleagues and survived two roadside bombs. Asked if the mission was worthwhile, he replied: “If I knew exactly what the mission was, probably so, but I don’t.”

In the end, is this another Vietnam? Isolated outposts and absolutely no command orders to win?

The battalion’s 1,500 soldiers are nine months in to a year-long deployment that has proved extraordinarily tough. Their goal was to secure the mountainous Wardak province and then to win the people’s allegiance through development and good governance.

In the meantime, in Afghanistan, we have female Marines wearing headscarves to make inroads with Afghani women.

"It's part of the effort to show we're sensitive to local culture," said Capt. Jennifer Gregoire, of East Strasburg, Pennsylvania. She leads the Female Engagement Team in the Now Zad Valley of Helmand province, the heartland of the Taliban insurgency.

In the meantime, in Afghanistan, General McChrystal has asked the President for 40,000 additional troops.

In the meantime, in the U.S., when Defense Secretary Robert Gates was asked about these statistics: "an estimated 80 percent of Afghanistan today has a permanent Taliban presence, compared to 72 percent a year ago and 54 percent in 2007," Gate responded:

"no doubt" that if Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, Al-Qaeda will have considerably more space in which to strengthen its forces, increase its recruitment, and raise more money for its jihad.

Nevertheless, Gates spoke of the need for pausing, reassessing, and reanalyzing. The troops fight and wait, and increasingly they are dying.

From another report out of Helman Province, reported by Anthony Lloyd:

“Shit day,” the colonel added. “Two KIA [Killed In Action]. Why is it always the ones with wives and children?”

I had seen that look before in the faces of field commanders in Afghanistan. They talk about their mission and their operations with an air of enthusiasm that is either real or projected, becoming a little more cautious as they explain the “small steps of progress”. Then, bang, one more of their soldiers is dead – “ragdolled” as the men call it. The patter stops, the mask drops fleetingly, and raw grief stares back into your face."

 In the meantime, at Combat Outpost Keating, 8 men died this weekend. They lost everything. Everything but the clothes on their back. Read about their plight here and considering donating. 

Related:
ChicagoRay: Obama Sending Olive Branches to More Terrorists

McChrystal Obama: General McChrystal Barack Obama Don't Talk

Let a military commander make a clear and concise statement that cannot be misunderstood, and the Pentagon rushes in to explain what he said. General Stanley McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan, answered an interviewer's question, and now we know that McChrystal and Obama have spoken once since he took command on July 15th. See video below.

General Stanley McChrystal

The Pentagon assures us that General McChrystal is "not complaining." The General was asked the question and he answered. That happens in life.

McChrystal answered truthfully, rather than shading the truth to make the President look good. He didn't embellish, he didn't roll his eyes, he didn't whine. If there is a problem here, it is not McChrystal's. Obama needs to "receive" information from McChrystal, not the other way around. It's odd. President Obama wants to talk to many: Iran, David Letterman, Venezuela, prime time TV-ers, Copenhagen, Zelaya, the U.N., ACORN, Hamas - everyone but the man he picked to win the war in Afghanistan, and FOXNews of course.

The problem is, Rahm Emanuel has been staying up late since this happened. What can he do to show this General, who was involved in at least two history-making events: Saddam Hussein's capture and the demise of al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is boss? He will think of something, and our troops will be on the losing end. Does Obama have the character not to diss the General? Nah. See the video below.

General McChrystal