Posted on 06/22/2010 8:15:05 PM PDT by Steelfish
McChrystal Balls
President Obama should reprimand his general, but listen to his complaints June 23 2010
General Stanley McChrystal, commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan, has a reputation as the most disciplined soldier of his generation, and one of the brightest. The asceticism of his daily life, to keep himself ready for any threat, is now legendary: an eight-mile run, only one meal and just four hours sleep. It is understandable, then, that yesterday’s revelations stunned Washington — and Kabul. The general had so far forgotten the cost of careless talk that he had griped about the President and senior White House officials to a freelance reporter from Rolling Stone magazine, and over the course of some days, allowed his aides to do so too.
The most abusive remarks, such as calling General Jim Jones, National Security Adviser, “a clown”, came from unnamed aides. So did a description of the first meeting between President Barack Obama and General McChrystal, at which the general is said to have found the President unprepared and disappointing. But General McChrystal himself complained that he could not face opening another e-mail from Richard Holbrooke, US special envoy, and that he had felt “betrayed” by a leaked critique of his strategy from Karl Eikenberry, US Ambassador to Afghanistan. He is sharply critical of the President for taking three months last year to decide to send more troops. His tone towards his civilian counterparts is one of exasperation, sometimes contempt.
The overall portrait is devastating: that senior military commanders are mockingly critical of top officials in Washington, and of the President himself. That rings true, from many reports. Clearly, General McChrystal was guilty of extraordinary folly.
(Excerpt) Read more at thetimes.co.uk ...
anglian, I have so many posts about these things I am not about to do the research again for YOU. There are thread after thread on this forum that contain information...not just mine. You wanna believe? Fine. Your prerogative.
But McC has just taken the EASY way out.
WHY???
If you can explain it, I would be just thrilled.
This is a man who tried to have his troops remove their vests during patrols in villages so “civilians” would trust them.
This is a man who went to an obscure village and with his own bodyhuard surrounding him, took off his OWN vest to frolick in a stream.
This is a man who SAID the Troops were too protective of themselves.
This is a man who ordered his troops to carry their weapons ob patrol without a round in the chamber, a split second berween life and death.
This is a man who has women Marines wearing headscarves to protect the “sensibilities” of wifebeating, sharia-loving, dope-dealing, murderous muslims.
This is a man whose major offensive in Marjah has failed utterly.
This is a man under whose command our deaths have almost matched the entire number of deaths in all the previous years in Afghanistan.
Defend it. You can’t.
THIS is the first, (but not the last,) stand out incident.
These Marines were pinned down, begging for air support. They didn’t get it because there MIGHT be civilians near where they were. The Marines are dead.
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2009/09/08/75036/were-pinned-down-4-us-marines.html
Excerpt:
GANJGAL, Afghanistan — We walked into a trap, a killing zone of relentless gunfire and rocket barrages from Afghan insurgents hidden in the mountainsides and in a fortress-like village where women and children were replenishing their ammunition.
“We will do to you what we did to the Russians,” the insurgent’s leader boasted over the radio, referring to the failure of Soviet troops to capture Ganjgal during the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.
Dashing from boulder to boulder, diving into trenches and ducking behind stone walls as the insurgents maneuvered to outflank us, we waited more than an hour for U.S. helicopters to arrive, despite earlier assurances that air cover would be five minutes away.
U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren’t near the village.
“We are pinned down. We are running low on ammo. We have no air. We’ve lost today,” Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter’s repeated demands for helicopters.
Four U.S. Marines were killed Tuesday, the most U.S. service members assigned as trainers to the Afghan National Army to be lost in a single incident since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion. Eight Afghan troops and police and the Marine commander’s Afghan interpreter also died in the ambush and the subsequent battle that raged from dawn until 2 p.m. around this remote hamlet in eastern Kunar province, close to the Pakistan border.
Three Americans and 19 Afghans were wounded, and U.S. forces later recovered the bodies of two insurgents, although they believe more were killed.
The Marines were cut down as they sought cover in a trench at the base of the village’s first layer cake-style stone house. Much of their ammunition was gone. One Marine was bending over a second, tending his wounds, when both were killed, said Marine Cpl. Dakota Meyer, 21, of Greensburg, Ky., who retrieved their bodies.
HISTORY OF RESISTANCE
A full moon was drenching the mountains in ghostly light as some 60 Afghan soldiers, 20 border police officers, 13 Marine and U.S. Army trainers and I set out for Ganjgal at 3 a.m. from the U.S. base in the Shakani District.
The operation, proposed by the Afghan army and refined by the U.S. trainers, called for the Afghans to search Ganjgal for weapons and hold a meeting with the elders to discuss the establishment of police patrols. The elders had insisted that Afghans perform the sweep. The Americans were there to give advice and call for air and artillery support if required.
Dawn was breaking by the time we alighted for a mile-long walk up a wash of gravel, rock and boulders which winds up to Ganjgal, some 60 rock-walled compounds perched high up the terraced slopes at the eastern end of the valley, six miles from the Pakistani border.
Small teams of Afghan troops and U.S. trainers headed to ridges on the valley’s southern and northern sides, setting up outposts as the main body headed slowly up toward the village and, unbeknownst to us, into the killing zone.
The terrain — craggy ravines and sweeping, tree-studded mountains riddled with boulders and caves — was made for guerrilla warfare. The ethnic Pashtun villagers pride themselves on their rejection of official authority, their history of resistance and their disdain of foreign forces that many regard as occupiers.
A possible clue to what was to come occurred when the lights in Ganjgal suddenly blinked out while our vehicles were still several miles away, crashing slowly through the semi-dark along a rutted track toward the village.
NO AIR SUPPORT
The first shot cracked out at 5:30 a.m., apparently just as the four Marines and the Afghan unit to which they were attached reached the outskirts of the village. It quickly swelled into a furious storm of gunfire that we realized had been prepared for our arrival.
Several U.S. officers said they suspected that the insurgents had been tipped off by sympathizers in the local Afghan security forces or by the village elders, who announced over the weekend that they were accepting the authority of the local government.
“Whatever we do always leaks,” said Marine Lt. Ademola Fabayo, 28, a New Yorker who was born in Nigeria and is the operations officer for the trainers from the 3rd Marine Division. “You can’t trust even some of their soldiers or officers.”
Sniper rounds snapped off rocks and sizzled overhead. Explosions of recoilless rifle rounds echoed through the valley, while bullets inched closer to the rock wall behind which I crouched with a handful U.S. and Afghan officers.
Lt. Fabayo and several other soldiers later said they’d seen women and children in the village shuttling ammunition to fighters positioned in windows and roofs. Across the valley and from their ridgeline outposts, the Afghans and Americans fired back.
At 5:50 a.m., Army Capt. Will Swenson, of Seattle, WA, the trainer of the Afghan Border Police unit in Shakani, began calling for air support or artillery fire from a unit of the Army’s 10th Mountain Division. The responses came back: No helicopters were available.
“This is unbelievable. We have a platoon (of Afghan army) out there and we’ve got no Hotel Echo,” Swenson shouted above the din of gunfire, using the military acronym for high explosive artillery shells. “We’re pinned down.”
The insurgents were firing from inside the village and from positions in the hills immediately behind it and to either side. Judging from the angles of the ricochets, several appeared to be trying to outflank us to get better shots.
“What are you going to do?” Maj. Talib, the operations officer of the Afghan army unit, asked Maj. Williams through his translator.
“We are getting air,” Williams replied.
“What are we going to do?” Talib repeated.
“We are getting air,” Williams replied again, perhaps knowing that none was available but hoping to quiet Talib.
At 6:05 a.m., as our position was becoming increasingly tenuous, Swenson and Fabayo agreed that it was time to pull back and radioed for artillery to fire smoke rounds to mask our retreat.
“They don’t have any smoke. They only have Willy Pete,” Swenson reported, referring to white phosphorus rounds that spew smoke.
Fifty minutes later, as a curtain of white phosphorus smoke roiled across the valley, Swenson and Fabayo unleashed an intense volley of covering fire while the rest of us sprinted back some 20 yards to a series of dirt furrows, weighed down by our flak vests and water carriers.
The two officers raced back to join us. Everyone jumped up and ran for the next stone wall. Everyone but me. Afraid that too many people were jammed together as they raced, offering easy targets, I waited behind for a break in the gunfire, an Afghan border police officer crouched next to me.
TIME TO MOVE
We soon noticed that the insurgent snipers were trying to outflank us again. I saw one up on a small rise fire and miss us by several feet. My companion decided that it was time to go and bolted away across the wash, but the gunfire grew too intense, and again I pulled my body into the dirt and rocks.
I wasn’t as terrified as I was angry: angry at the absence of air support, angry that there was no artillery fire, angry that Williams’ interpreter had been killed, angry at the realization that the operation had obviously been betrayed and angry at myself for not bolting with the others.
He voted for Obama.........
Please explain how you know that.
He voted for Obama.........
Please explain how you know that.
“General McChrystal: Taliban could be part of solution in Afghanistan”
Would love to ask Michael Yon his opinion on the whole thing but he was booted out of Afghanistan recently by ? for speaking the truth and having the nerve to take the side of the troops with his articles. He was also openly critical of the weak leadership.
I believe the whole Rolling Stone interview was a set up from the start. Obama et al may have wanted McC fragged by the press and knew RS was the publication to achieve that goal. This is a great excuse to pin the unraveling of Obama’s war on the General and the General alone. Knowing the public would ignore the fact that he ultimately was carrying Obie's water and insane PC counter-insurgency policies and ROEs. Which McC championed and put our troop's lives at risk with BTW.
Of course McC showed complete lack of judgment to allow the leftist liberal publication that recently featured Algore on the cover to follow he and his staff around for weeks on end. Perhaps, he was ‘persuaded’ to do the interview and he rebelled by allowing a few jabs to go out and it backfired, or maybe he was looking to go out in a blaze of glory. Don't know.
Regardless, before folks wrap McC in the flag and applaud his actions, they may want to wait until they read up more on his past decisions and actions before giving him hero status. Obama probably got what he wanted, a resignation from his General so he can throw McC under the bus if he loses the war or exits ala Saigon. In the meantime, Obama puts Patraeus in there to look hawkish before the Nov. elections and Israel's possible attack on Iran. There's a lot more to this then meets the eye. Much more.
As he stated that he voted for Bambi, would he then run as a democrat and support the current democrat platform?
You’re right. If he didn’t have better judgement than to vote for obama, we might be better off if he just go home.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37847841/ns/us_news-military
snip...
Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."
Do you think McCrystal just may have done this on Purpose? Maybe he wanted to turn in his resignation so Obozo would have no choice but to replace him, and knowing who would be at the top of the list but General P, who now Obozo owes big time, so now there might actually be a resolution instead of Obazo pulling our troops out in 2011. Maybe now the job can get done and Obozo will actually have to give General Petraes what ever the General wants.
Do you think McCrystal just may have done this on Purpose? Maybe he wanted to turn in his resignation so Obozo would have no choice but to replace him, and knowing who would be at the top of the list but General P, who now Obozo owes big time, so now there might actually be a resolution instead of Obazo pulling our troops out in 2011. Maybe now the job can get done and Obozo will actually have to give General Petraes what ever the General wants.
Is it me or are the links provided incorrect for the article in question?
See post 10 for the editorial in its entirety.
Thanks.
Well, here we go!
6/24/10
“The Night Beat: Obama Borrows the Military Back”
“...The sad irony of the day is that McChrystal himself, initially skeptical about Obama, had grown to trust his commander in chief. But McChrystal’s staff — they were stuck in McClellan mode. And indeed, there may have been a reason for this: civilian control of the military means little when the civilians can’t tell their knees from their elbows in Afghanistan...”
“...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...”
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2540692/posts
Sad to see that some FReeepers would get so taken in by Mcclatchy. A COMMY RAG.
Sept. 09'
"...U.S. commanders, citing new rules to avoid civilian casualties, rejected repeated calls to unleash artillery rounds at attackers dug into the slopes and tree lines — despite being told repeatedly that they weren't near the village..."
~ Marine Maj. Kevin Williams, 37, said through his translator to his Afghan counterpart, responding to the latter's repeated demands for helicopters.
Those are the findings of a new investigation into the Sept. 8 ambush involving a team of U.S. military trainers embedded with Afghan troops in Kunar province.
But even though the deaths of the team members were the result of “negligent” leadership — “contributing directly to the loss of life” — it appears no one involved in the botched planning or execution of the mission will get more than a letter of reprimand for contributing to the deaths of five fellow service members.
Three Army officers were cited as a result of the incident, but their names, ranks and units were not disclosed. Officials with Combined Joint Task Force 82 in Afghanistan, which oversaw the unit, have declined to say whether any of them may face more serious discipline, and whether any of them have been relieved of command.
The investigation’s findings
Overseen by CJTF-82’s commander, Army Maj. Gen. Curtis Scaparrotti, the investigation found a slew of mistakes, according to a executive summary report released Feb. 18. Among them:
• Poor planning.
The acting battalion commander and operations officer were not involved in the mission’s planning and coordination. It was devised instead by field-grade officers and the military trainers without participation from fire-support personnel, the summary said.
• Bad intel.
The embedded trainers were told to expect “light harassing fire” from about 10 insurgents while traveling to meet with village elders in Ganjgal, nestled in mountainous terrain near the Pakistan border. The team instead was forced to face between 100 and 150 well-armed insurgents, Defense Department officials now say.
• Battalion-level leadership absent.
The first shots rang out at 5:30 a.m. At 8:10, the ETT reported it was taking numerous casualties. While the trainers and their Afghan counterparts endured the 2½-hour attack, the battalion’s commander, operations officer, fire support officer, intelligence officer and noncommissioned officers in charge “were not continuously present in the operations center.”
“The actions of key leaders at the battalion level,” the report states, “were inadequate and ineffective.” Unit leadership “reacted appropriately” when they realized how serious the situation was, the summary said, but by then the five U.S. troops and nearly a dozen Afghan troops had been killed or mortally wounded.
• Inexperience.
During the ambush, the officer manning the operations center’s battle captain slot was “not adequately experienced, qualified or trained,” the summary said. The position typically helps manage information coming from the field. A more experienced officer took over at 8 a.m., but it was too late.
• Advice ignored.
While several personnel were missing from the operations center early during the engagement, a battalion NCO overseeing artillery requests “took action to provide immediate support to the units in the Ganjgal valley early in the engagement.” An Air Force joint terminal attack controller also acted swiftly to support the requests, but both “were overruled by higher echelons,” the summary said.
• Lack of preparation.
Complacency within the command post and poor training standards also contributed to the incident, the summary said. The operations center failed to competently track the battle, preventing higher headquarters from intervening in time to save lives. There was no experienced field-grade officer and senior noncommissioned officer in the command post, and it “contributed directly to mission failure,” the report said.
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/2010/03/marine_ambush_030310w/
“While several personnel were missing from the operations center early during the engagement, a battalion NCO overseeing artillery requests “took action to provide immediate support to the units in the Ganjgal valley early in the engagement.” An Air Force joint terminal attack controller also acted swiftly to support the requests, but both “were overruled by higher echelons,” the summary said.”
And this absolves McC exactly how. He was the top commander. His ROE prevented action that could have saved these men’s lives.
How many internal investigations are going to lay the blame at the feet of the man whose rules they followed? NONE.
The fact that no one was charged, or eveb named here should tell you something.
This is NOT rhe only deadly incident these ROE have been responsible for.
And it wasn’t McClatchy who broke the story. I have the link on my profile page, but it was dead, so I had to search for the story elsewhere.
Like I said. Defend McChrystal to your heart’s content. He is/was unfit for command and the way he got out of it proves the point.
“While several personnel were missing from the operations center early during the engagement, a battalion NCO overseeing artillery requests “took action to provide immediate support to the units in the Ganjgal valley early in the engagement.” An Air Force joint terminal attack controller also acted swiftly to support the requests, but both “were overruled by higher echelons,” the summary said.”
And this absolves McC exactly how. He was the top commander. His ROE prevented action that could have saved these men’s lives.
How many internal investigations are going to lay the blame at the feet of the man whose rules they followed? NONE.
The fact that no one was charged, or even named here should tell you something.
This is NOT rhe only deadly incident these ROE have been responsible for.
And it wasn’t McClatchy who broke the story. I have the link on my profile page, but it was dead, so I had to search for the story elsewhere.
Like I said. Defend McChrystal to your heart’s content. He is/was unfit for command.
I agree. I think the General believed his own press clippings. He surrounded himself with sycophants and believed he had earned their admiration and deserved it. He allowed the reporter unheard of access because he believed he and his staff were above criticism or reproach. The reporter revealed the facts, however and exposed the command climate McChrystal had created as undisciplined and corrosive. Obama should have had every officer named in that article in front of his desk with their heels locked asking them if they had anything else they wanted to say.
Those Marines were killed at the very start of the ambush and before the artillery request was even made. I wonder why that little fact wasn't mentioned? Your claim is not valid.
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