McChrystal Does Not Matter-We Need To GET OUT NOW!

[kpete]

McChrystal Does Not Matter
Garry Wills

Pete Souza/The White House

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The initial reaction to Michael Hastings’s Rolling Stone article on General McChrystal was disturbing. The emphasis has been on the early parts of the article, with McChrystal’s dismissive attitude toward the President and his administration. Instant discussion focused on the person McChrystal—should he be fired, or resign, or have his resignation accepted? That does not matter. The Hastings article is powerful and important because of what it goes on to report from Afghanistan, building to a crushing conclusion, that the general was unable to command even the respect of Hamid Karzai and McChrystal’s own troops—for the very good reason that he has been given an impossible assignment, one that gets more surreal and absurd every day. His removal will not make the Afghan war go any better, for the simple reason that nothing will do that.

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The conflict around McChrystal will only matter if it is the occasion of recognizing what a fool’s errand he was sent on. Any military replacement will only repeat his calls for more time, more troops, more recognition of the failed policy of “counter-insurgency” (COIN). Hastings’s real point is signaled early in his Rolling Stone piece:

*****The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it’s precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn’t want.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236

McChrystal went to his station at a time when our few allies are leaving, national support at home is evaporating, Karzai is looking to future deals, and the strains of overcommitment in numbers and undercommitment in real resources is tearing our forces apart. The New York Times reports that we are now paying tribal chiefs to protect our contractors, whom we are paying to protect troops, who are no longer able to fend for themselves in an impossible assignment. We keep paying for results that do not occur.

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No other general is going to succeed with such men in such a position.
The overwhelming lesson of Hastings’s article is
not: “Get rid of McChrystal.” It is, simply: “Get out!”

June 22, 2010 10:40 p.m.
http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2010/jun/22/mcchrystal-does-not-matter/

[Sebastian Doyle]

1. Absolutely true

And anybody who thinks swapping out McChrystalmeth for BetrayUs is somehow an improvement, is really deluding themselves.

No general can save this fiasco. If you could raise George Fucking Patton himself from the dead, this war would still be a goddamn waste of time which NEVER had anything to do with defending this country.

Spare me the lies. Fuck the excuses. Pull the plug.

[kenny blankenship]

2. We may be out of money, we may not have any fresh ideas, we may be stretched thin militarily

but by God we still have more Friedman Units. Fight on! Fight on, until the last Friedman Unit is fired, and the Chinese send the IMF around to repossess our ass.