I still cannot get my arms around this situation. I don’t know the General. I don’t know what is going on in Afghanistan right now, other than accounts I can read.
I am perfectly willing to entertain the concept that the General is playing an elaborate game of chess against someone used to playing checkers, and who is willing to sacrifice his career to prevent a debacle in Afghanistan.
I am even willing to consider that he never voted for Obama as he said he did, and that there is some byzantine reason for his saying so.
But if not, even if McChrystal never said anything himself, if he allowed his subordinates to display open insubordination in the presence of a weasel from Rolling Stone without having some kind of motive, this is simply poor leadership and bad judgement on its face.
Given his record, I simply am having a difficult time reconciling his actions.
I don’t play chess anymore, so I could be missing something on his part, and I will willingly concede that is possible.
There's part of his record I think you may be glossing over...Keep in mind that as commander of JSOC, McChrystal oversaw PSYOPS and Civila Affairs; he's no stranger to the manipulation and control of information at the strategic level. I suspect McChrystal's choice of venue and the orchestrated "slips" were all quite deliberate, and Rolling Stone in fact got used. If McChrystal would have sounded off on Fox, WSJ, National Review, etc. it all would have been written off as right wing rantings. Using RS as his vector makes it virtually impossible for the left, and the MSM to ignore. I'm not sure what McChrystal's next move(s) might be, but it ought to be interesting to watch.