Gen. McChrystal Ordered to the White House Over Rolling Stone Remarks

Well this is gonna be awkward.

McChrystal has been instructed to fly from Kabul to Washington today to attend Obama’s regular monthly security team meeting tomorrow at the White House.

An administration official says McChrystal was asked to attend in person rather than by secure video teleconference, “where he will have to explain to the Pentagon and the commander in chief his quotes about his colleagues in the piece.”

Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have spoken with McChrystal. Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen, said “the chairman spoke to General McChrystal last night and expressed his deep disappointment with the article and with the comments expressed therein.”

Gen. McChrystal and his minions said some things "on background" with a Rolling Stone reporter, who then obliged their unspoken request and ran with it. Before the piece was even published, the general was apologizing and Obama is reportedly pretty steamed about it.

McChrystal apparently said that he was disappointed in Obama's lack of preparedness for a meeting and betrayed by Obama's ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, who he accuses of undoing the work the military has been fighting and dying for.

McChrystal's aides also said some things that are funny, but not properly uttered to Rolling Stone reporters. First, that NSA James Jones is a clown, something we've certainly remarked on here at the HQ. Also, calling the Vice President "BiteMe" instead of "Biden." Alright, that one's less ha-ha funny and more petty.

Anyway, the general has been rubbing Obama the wrong way for about a year now. Obama may be calling him home to fire him.

Oh, and Politico got hold of the Rolling Stone article (PDF).

The More Insubordinate Parts... [ace] ...are gathered up at Hot Air.

McChrystal's big problem here is that he doesn't have anything approaching like Petraeus' record of results. If you have big results you can have a big mouth. (Not that Petraeus has a big mouth; he could have a bigger mouth if he wanted to, though.)

If you can fire Douglas MacArthur, you can fire Stanley MaChrystal.

MaChrystal's insubordination aside, and his discomfort with civilian leadership aside, there is no doubt that what he said is 100% true.

Obama ran on a lie. Well, many lies, but one lie here is critical: He claimed that he was eager to depart Iraq only so he could go kick some ass in a war he claimed to consider vital, Afghanistan. But he showed up for the meeting with MacChrystal (25 minutes!) unprepared, disengaged, and distracted as ever by his own purported awesomeness.

McChrystal's Real Offense... is forcing overly restrictive rules of engagement on our soldiers that wind up killing them.

posted by Gabriel Malor at 09:29 AM

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