Posted on 06/24/2010 8:08:31 PM PDT by raptor22
All that mattered Wednesday was the mission. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal deserved to be fired for the contemptuous remarks that he and members of his staff made to a reporter about President Obama and his national security team.
But Obama would have been justified in sticking with McChrystal if, in the president's estimation, firing General Loose Lips would have done significant harm to the mission -- achieving our nation's goals in Afghanistan.
Fortunately, Obama struck on a way to do what's best for the United States -- reaffirm the primacy of civilian command over the military -- without compromising the mission in Afghanistan. He replaced McChrystal with the general's own boss, Gen. David H. Petraeus.
Full speed ahead.
Not only has a small crisis been averted, but an opportunity presents itself. Obama's civilian and military advisers can now, if they seize the moment, end their infighting, come together as a team and refocus on winning -- or at the very least salvaging -- this war.
(Excerpt) Read more at suntimes.com ...
Yeah, like putting those words together in a sentence means anything at all to anybody.
When you hear this, you know that the war is already lost and that you are being prepared for it.
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
The Dems/Libs despise Petraeus for Salvaging “Bush’s war” in Iraq, so they’re hoping he can either salvage it for Barry to take credit, or fail and be unfairly blamed (”Betray-Us” redux).
obummer has successfully transferred the fail factor to Petraeus’s shoulders should that happen. Victory belongs to the bam only. what a drama
The Dems/Libs despise Petraeus for Salvaging “Bush’s war” in Iraq, so they’re hoping he can either salvage it for Barry to take credit, or fail and be unfairly blamed (”Betray-Us” redux).
Tou nailed it. Bastards.
He’d better get rid of the stupid ROE’s.
Yep. Courageous restraint is really a winning slogan and war plan.
Now B52s rearranging the terrain of Pakistan and Afgan border areas from now to next July would alter the course of this unity of purpose mission.
Obammy has no interest in, committment, or knowledge of this present unpleasantness, nor the courage or interest in seeking victory.
The cowardice in chief seeks the defeat of America, not its victory.
Well said!
And do what? Just start shooting? This whole thing was a gross mistake from the start. We should have bombed those mountain areas flat, then left. Now we are wasting our people’s lives to keep that crook Karzai in power.
Anybody have any idea what winning is here? Is there an objective?
Let the politicians send their kids to die in the conflicts they start. Bastards, indeed.
I’m all for getting out, too. But as long as our troops are there, they should not be restricted in defending themselves.
****I’ve been there and done that. You don’t need to tell me any of this.
BRING THE TROOPS HOME!!!!!!!!!!!
This is from the magazine article that got the general in so much trouble. Seems like the troops won’t miss his strategy or him:
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. “Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,” the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. “Does that make any fu****g sense?” asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. “We should just drop a fu****g bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?”
The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they’ve been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. “Fu**, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our fu****g gun on,” says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. “I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they’re all fu***d up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don’t understand it themselves. But we’re fu****g losing this thing.”
McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. “I ask you what’s going on in your world, and I think it’s important for you all to understand the big picture as well,” McChrystal begins. “How’s the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you’re losing?” McChrystal says.
“Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we’re losing, sir,” says Hicks.
McChrystal nods. “Strength is leading when you just don’t want to lead,” he tells the men. “You’re leading by example. That’s what we do. Particularly when it’s really, really hard, and it hurts inside.” Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counterinsurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He makes COIN seem like common sense, but he’s careful not to bullshit the men. “We are knee-deep in the decisive year,” he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has the initiative – “but I don’t think we do, either.” It’s similar to the talk he gave in Paris, but it’s not winning any hearts and minds among the soldiers. “This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks,” McChrystal tries to joke. “But it doesn’t get the same reception from infantry companies.”
During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. “We aren’t putting fear into the Taliban,” one soldier says.
“Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing,” McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can’t kill your way out of Afghanistan. “The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn’t work.”
“I’m not saying go out and kill everybody, sir,” the soldier persists. “You say we’ve stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don’t believe that’s true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it’s getting.”
“I agree with you,” McChrystal says. “In this area, we’ve not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I’m telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?”
A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn’t have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. “That’s the way this game is,” McChrystal says. “It’s complex. I can’t just decide: It’s shirts and skins, and we’ll kill all the shirts.”
As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn’t succeeded at easing the men’s anger. He makes one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. “There’s no way I can make that easier,” he tells them. “No way I can pretend it won’t hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you’re doing a great job. Don’t let the frustration get to you.” The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren’t buying it.
Thank you Pining_4_TX. I understand.
As one Freeper posted on another board, “how do we define victory?”
The country littered with the bodies of tens of thousands of dead Taliban and terrorism wiped out as a major force in that country.
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