Posted on 09/22/2009 7:47:30 AM PDT by CWW
McChrystal to resign if not given resources for Afghanistan
By Bill RoggioSeptember 21, 2009 4:17 PM
Within 24 hours of the leak of the Afghanistan assessment to The Washington Post, General Stanley McChrystal's team fired its second shot across the bow of the Obama administration. According to McClatchy, military officers close to General McChrystal said he is prepared to resign if he isn't given sufficient resources (read "troops") to implement a change of direction in Afghanistan:
Adding to the frustration, according to officials in Kabul and Washington, are White House and Pentagon directives made over the last six weeks that Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan, not submit his request for as many as 45,000 additional troops because the administration isn't ready for it.
In the last two weeks, top administration leaders have suggested that more American troops will be sent to Afghanistan, and then called that suggestion "premature." Earlier this month, Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that "time is not on our side"; on Thursday, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates urged the public "to take a deep breath."
...
In Kabul, some members of McChrystal's staff said they don't understand why Obama called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" but still hasn't given them the resources they need to turn things around quickly.
Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy that the McChrystal they know would resign before he'd stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.
"Yes, he'll be a good soldier, but he will only go so far," a senior official in Kabul said. "He'll hold his ground. He's not going to bend to political pressure."
On Thursday, Gates danced around the question of when the administration would be ready to receive McChrystal's request, which was completed in late August. "We're working through the process by which we want that submitted," he said.
The entire process followed by the military in implementing a change of course in Afghanistan is far different, and bizarrely so, from the process it followed in changing strategy in Iraq.
For Afghanistan, the process to decide on a course change began in March of this year, when Bruce Reidel was tasked to assess the situation. This produced the much-heralded yet vague "AfPak" assessment. Then, in May, General David McKiernan was fired and replaced by General McChrystal, who took command in June. General McChrystal's assessment hit President Obama's desk at the end of August, almost three months after he took command. And yet now in the last half of September, the decision on additional forces has yet to be submitted to the administration.
Contrast this with Iraq in the fall of 2006. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was fired just one day after the elections in early November. The Keane-Kagan plan for Iraq was submitted to President Bush shortly afterward, and encompassed both the assessment of the situation and the recommended course of action, including the recommended number of troops to be deployed to deal with the situation. General David Petraeus replaced General George Casey in early February 2007, and hit the ground running; the surge strategy was in place, troops were being mustered to deploy to Iraq, and commanders on the ground were preparing for and executing the new orders. The first of the surge units began to arrive in Iraq only weeks later, in March.
Today, the military is perceiving that the administration is punting the question of a troop increase in Afghanistan, and the military is even questioning the administration's commitment to succeed in Afghanistan. The leaking of the assessment and the report that McChrystal would resign if he is not given what is needed to succeed constitute some very public pushback against the administration's waffling on Afghanistan.
I did ask a question
The main thing I didn’t like about Ike was his “military industrial” crap and how he undeservedly treated Patton like crap. On his deathbed, Patton told his wife that he didn’t want Ike nor that SOB Beadle Smith anywhere near his funeral.
You have men that are EXTREMELY tough minded. They are in the midst of a WORLD WAR. Personalities become involved. The important thing is that NONE of them EVER allowed that to divert their attention from the main goal WIN.
.....................
HUMMM. Maybe we should all take a lesson from these great men. Do not allow petty differences (and some not so petty) divert us from the goal. STOP the commie/Fascist/Socialist takeover of the United States.
That is one of the damnedest things I've ever heard. Just think about it.
Wow was I wrong. Obama is a real worm. McChrystal is serving him a cold, cold lunch.
Johnson made Vietnam much, much worse by his tentative decisions and political posturing.
Obama seems to not know history at all.
You could not ask for a better illustration of incompetence. Let alone ability to decide the HARD things.
What grieves me to the core is that the lives of our service men and women are on the line! Apparently Obama doesn’t give a $hit about them! And it SHOWS!
I have to say that I’m suspicious of McMaster. He accepted Onada’s ROE without even a whimper.
But it looks like he may have decided to pick his fight—and an Afghan Surge is it. I like his timing, in any case. Drops one more negative into The Dear Leader’s lap.
If Onada fires him, it’ll just fire up the conservative base even more. I hope as many folks as can are gearing up for “Can You Hear Us Now” campaigns being planned for multiple cities around the country. I plan to attend the one in Manhattan on the 17th of October.
If you need help slapping those idiots in DC, let me know, I want to be by your side !!
I hate no balls Obama....he is becoming known around the World as Impotent and Weak ....HE IS A LIAR AND A COWARD !!
It’s not so much having a CiC whose politics you don’t agree with, it’s the feeling that the people in charge disdain the military and do not understand it at all, and the sense that the politicians salivate at the chance of fulfilling their ‘American troops are murderers’ fantasy by charging soldiers for war crimes on thin evidence in very complex situations while hamstring soldiers in the field with highly restrictive ROE (’cause otherwise we’d be massacring civilians I guess)
Oh really.....well HC needs to worry about what “color” her pant suit will be tomorrow !! HC needs to concentrate all her efforts on getting her darling Zelaya back in office or maybe she needs to take another month long vacation to Africa !! Better yet ...keep calling Poland, HC !! .....maybe one of these days someone will answer !!
I agree 1100%. i was actually thinking that about 3 days ago. We are in a time of war. A president who understands foreign matter is needed.
O'Reilly is so egotistical (and uninformed) that he thinks he can out-debate these two Islamo/Commie pros.
O'Reilly couldn't win a debate with Little Lulu.
Leni
If it happens and he goes, let him. Once he’s resigned he will be a private citizen and untouchable to Zero. As long as he remains in the military he is constitutionally bound to follow orders from Zero, since Zero is Commander In Chief.
If he remains in the military past his tolerance point and keeps pestering Zero, Zero could legally have him arrested and could charge him with treason at worst. And you know that the press and anti-war freaks would drool and go crazy over something like that happening.
The 1st Idiot is using the lives of our troops to pay for his delay in making a damned decision.
It’s either a war or it’s not. If the 1st Idiot isn’t willing to do what needs to be done, then get our people the hell out of there.
Too Fracking Bad! Submit the request!
>Isn’t he the guy that O appointed? He said he could do the job with existing resources.
Maybe we were lied to again?<
Bailing out of Iraq allowed Afghanistan to resupply and bring more fighters of terrorists to the battle field.
Unintended consequences of zeros’s cut and run.
We had the country under control for a while, now zero is allowing the soviet union to back terrorists there and put more troops on the ground against us.
0 will not put more troops in there, the general is smart to leave, he took a winning war and it is now turning into a loser with the new obama rules for engagement and policies. Why go down with a sinking ship? The SS Titanic Obama is a loser ...
John McCain.
I don’t know where this article got the idea that McChrystal has threatened to resign. He has NOT. The only talk of resignation came from unknown sources who said the McChrystal THEY know would resign. McChrystal is no hero here. Not by a longshot.
Quote from article:
Three officers at the Pentagon and in Kabul told McClatchy Newspapers that the McChrystal they know would resign before he would stand behind a faltering policy that he thought would endanger his forces or the strategy.
Here is the original article:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2343591/posts
REPOST:
McChrystal: More Forces or ‘Mission Failure’ (Drudge headline)
Monday, September 21, 2009 9:30:53 AM · 36 of 121
MestaMachine to silverleaf; 444Flyer
“McChrystal makes clear that his call for more forces is predicated on the adoption of a strategy in which troops emphasize protecting Afghans rather than killing insurgents or controlling territory. Most starkly, he says: ‘[I]nadequate resources will likely result in failure. However, without a new strategy, the mission should not be resourced.’”
The true context of McChrystal’s call, (piss be upon him,) for more Troops is in the first line of a paragraph far down the aricle.
It is NOT his goal to protect our WARRIORS.
It is NOT his goal to defeat the Taliban.
It is NOT his goal to protect the National Security of this country!
The headline for this article is GROSSLY misleading.
Me to McChrystal:
YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE UNIFORM! YOU ARE BETRAYING OUR WARRIORS!
ME TO THE PENTAGON: When are you going to do the right thing by our TROOPS?????
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