HE DISSED ME, MAN!
Posted on 06/24/2010 2:04:47 PM PDT by Kaslin
In confiding to Rolling Stone their unflattering opinions of the military acumen of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, National Security Adviser Gen. James Jones, Dick Holbrooke and Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his staff were guilty of colossal stupidity.
And President Obama had cause to cashier them. Yet his decision to fire McChrystal may prove both unwise and costly.
For McChrystal, unlike Gen. MacArthur, never challenged the war policy -- he is carrying it out -- and Barack Obama is no Harry Truman.
Moreover, the war strategy Obama is pursuing is the McChrystal Plan, devised by the general and being implemented by the general in Marja and Kandahar, perhaps the decisive campaign of the war.
Should that plan now fail, full responsibility falls on Obama.
He has made the Afghan war his war in a way it never was before.
If the McChrystal strategy fails, critics will charge Obama with causing the defeat by firing the best fighting general in the Army out of pique over some officers-club remarks that bruised the egos of West Wing warriors.
And though those remarks never should have appeared in print, they may well reflect the sentiments of not a few soldiers and Marine officers on third and fourth tours of duty in the Afghan theater.
Had Obama, instead of firing McChrystal, told him to shut up, can the interviews and go back to fighting the war until the December review of strategy, he could have shown those soldiers he is a bigger man than they or McChrystal's team give him credit for.
And if success in Afghanistan is the highest goal, how does it help to fire the best fighting general? Do you relieve Gen. Patton during combat because he vents his prejudices or opinions?
This city may draw the parallel, but the Obama-McChrystal clash does not remotely rise to the historic level of the collision between MacArthur and Truman.
Truman had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ordered the airlift that broke the Berlin blockade, and produced the Marshall Plan and NATO. He had won election in his own right with a legendary comeback in 1948.
Obama has nothing like Truman's credibility as a war leader.
And MacArthur was the most famous U.S. soldier since Gen. Grant. No. 1 at West Point, he was a legendary commander in France in 1918, leading troops out of the trenches with a swagger stick.
Driven out of the Philippines in 1942, he had declared, "I shall return," and led the liberation of the islands in 1944. He conducted the famous island-hopping campaign up the archipelagos of the South Pacific and took Japan's surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.
As military proconsul, he presided over the reconstruction of Japan, wrote her constitution and converted her into an ally.
When North Korea invaded the South and drove the U.S. Army into the Pusan perimeter, MacArthur landed Marines far behind enemy lines at Inchon in a flanking maneuver that destroyed the North Korean army and will be studied at military academies for centuries to come.
In late 1950, MacArthur was stunned by the intervention in Korea of the armies of Mao Zedong, lately victorious in China's four-year civil war.
MacArthur's clash with Truman was not over something so trivial as a gossipy article in Rolling Stone. MacArthur's hands had been tied by Truman.
He was not allowed to bomb the Yalu bridges over which Chinese troops were pouring into Korea. He was not allowed to bomb Chinese troop concentrations and munitions dumps in Manchuria. He was not allowed to use Chiang Kai-shek's armies on Taiwan. He was not allowed hot pursuit of enemy aircraft into Chinese or Russian airspace.
MacArthur was being restricted to fighting the war Mao wanted to fight, a war of attrition against the world's most populous nation, and largest army, while China was allowed to remain a privileged sanctuary, off-limits to U.S. bombers like those that smashed Germany and Japan.
In his address to Congress, after his firing by Truman, MacArthur put it this way: "'Why,' my soldiers asked of me, 'surrender military advantages to an enemy in the field?' I could not answer."
MacArthur's letter to Rep. Joe Martin, in response to a letter from the GOP leader, was indeed a challenge to Truman's policy of avoiding any risk of a clash with Russia, even if it meant U.S. soldiers would pay the price of Truman's timidity.
Events would prove MacArthur right.
Truman's restrictions would ensure a "no-win war" for two more years that would cost tens of thousands more American lives, and Harry would be sent packing with the lowest rating of any president in history.
Gen. Eisenhower would take office, two years after MacArthur's firing, and threaten the exact escalation MacArthur envisioned, ending the Korean War in six months.
Obama and his party may be celebrating his cashiering of Gen. McChrystal as a macho moment, but by firing the fighting general, for his foolish remarks, Obama has deepened the gulf between his party and the U.S. military.
Read my tagline.
I don't see a downside here...
A very fitting tagline, except are you sure he is our president? He sure does not act as if he is, and I refuse to claim him
HE DISSED ME, MAN!
I haven’t read the Rolling Stone article, but it seems from credible sources like Mark Levin that the General didn’t say anything worthy of losing command. The so-called inflammatory comments that our not-so-beloved president took umbrage with were made by unnamed staffers, etc.
Perhaps McChrystal took advantage of the situation to get away from this fool.
Now Barry will make Petraus go through a nomination process to take over the job!?! Does the outrage never cease! It’s like asking Paul McCartney audition for a WH show!
I don’t either.
America: Now illegitimizing people’s opinions by refusing to acknowledge the sovereign right of thought.
Pat brilliantly demolishes the media myth of Obama as a Trumanesque figure and convincingly shows the critical differences between the two events.
Obama, man, has anyone self compared themselves so much to past Presidents; I mean, one day he’s Rooseveltian, then Lincolnesque, now Trumanish.
Pat describes Obama’s dillema perfectly - the “disengaged dilletante” is gonna find out how hot the kitchen gets, July 2011 Retreat or not.
He’s our president because he signs the paperwork. If it is later shown that he has fraudulently held the office, those who helped keep him illegally in power should likewise pay the legal price. Since it would be seditious overthrow of our government to instill an illegible politician and engage in criminal conspiracy to cover up the facts, the punishment in court could be pretty fierce.
All of his legislation would become null and void as it would be counterfit. No matter whether Biden would claim to “sign it right away”. Some on the middle (who claim to be on the right) say that we shouldn’t even go there because of the constitutional crisis that would arise. Meanwhile 38% say it doesn’t matter if he is actually inelligible. This is why we won’t see the Stalinist left ever abandon their support for him in polls. Facts don’t matter. He’s “special”.
Easiest way to show Obama != Truman, based on everything Obama has EVER said:
The kid's never been accountable in his life.
Excellent article, thanks for posting.
Obama is for it.
Excellent article, thanks for posting.
When Obama and Company were elected two Novembers ago, I tried to warn some friends with U S Grant’s, “No enemy is half so dangerous as an unreliable ally.” Now, of course, we know that O & Co are not an ally, reliable or otherwise. They are our enemies. Not opponents, enemies.
When enough vets are ready to “fix bayonets,” let me know. I don’t have a rifle that will accept a bayonet, and I’m too durn old and slow to use one anyway, but please let me try to help. Pray for words to win our “war,” but don’t bet your freedom on it.
Michael Savage has the same assessment. Michael hypothesized that maybe the bigger reason was to push out someone who may not have supported open attitudes towards homosexuality in the military. Obama's still trying to get rid of "don't ask don't tell".
I bet you 0bama did not read it either, except the byline in the title the real enemy: The wimps in the White House, which gave him a hissyfit. Here is the articleThe Runaway General
I bet you 0bama did not read it either, except the byline in the title the real enemy: The wimps in the White House, which gave him a hissyfit. Here is the articleThe Runaway General
I read about half of it. Much of it reminded me of why I let my subscription lapse about twenty years ago.
Nah Pat. An officer who becomes a 4 star with the lives of troops in his hands does not have a trace of colossal stupidity in his being.
Whatever the reason for the General and experienced staff to diss all the civilian leadership with a reporter on hand to take it all down, you can rule out stupidity and faulty judgment.
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