McChrystal Method

[unhappycamper]

McChrystal Method
Mike Bonifer
Posted: October 30, 2009 02:31 PM

Like a lot of media observers, I began seeing the Pentagon's campaign to get 40,000 more American soldiers into Afghanistan ramp up several weeks ago in the mainstream media, at about the same time Disney began rolling the heavy promotional artillery on its November release of A Christmas Carol.

Like the Disney flick, which features state-of-the-art motion capture animation and stars Jim Carrey, the campaign for The 40,000 is built around visual effects like drone spy planes and night vision cameras, and features a star player, General Stanley McChrystal.

I'm pretty sure A Christmas Carol is going to have a happy ending like it has every other time it has been produced. I'm much less certain about The 40,000. It looks like a remake of Russian-financed disaster epic from about 20 years ago that sank the Soviets, which was itself an updating of a series of three Anglo-Afghan campaigns waged by the British Empire from 1839 to 1919, all with less than happy results for their producers.

The General McChrystal character is what you'd call problematic. Ads and PR for The 40,000 depict the General as reading books by the truckload, being fiercely driven, setting a pace no mere mortal can maintain. The Pentagon production notes tell us that his character sleeps four hours a night, eats one meal a day, and runs twelve miles daily in the desert sun.

This is not what you call aspirational behavior by a main character. Sleeping four hours a night and eating one meal a day is something not even the grungiest Afghan goatherd wants for himself. And even the most tyro screenwriter knows that eating and sleeping scenes bog a story down. The Pentagon's star-making machinery is confusing obsessive with heroic. Overeating and oversleeping are problems we should be fighting in America, they do not appear to be issues in Afghanistan.


Rest of article at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-bonifer/mcchrystal-method_b_332666.html