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We'll never know exactly what went down when President Barack Hussein Obama met with General Stanley Allen McChrystal on Wednesday in the White House. All we do know is that the president was "furious" over the general's comments in the article to be published this week in Rolling Stone, "The Runaway General."
We do know that it wasn't a beer summit comparable to the one the president hosted last year to heal the damage he caused in the Crowley-Gates-Cambridge brouhaha. This-sit down ended up with the abstemious general submitting his resignation which is code for being threatened with a sacking unless he faded away quietly.
I have to concede that Obama was between that proverbial rock and hard place over the situation in which McChrystal bad mouthed the president and members of the administration. He was sort of damned if he did fire him and damned if he didn't.
If he didn't fire him, aka accept his resignation, Obama would have undercut his own authority, the office of the presidency, and the nation's tradition that the military is subject to civilian authority starting with the commander-in-chief. If that weren't the case, we would be no better than banana republics.
If he did fire him, aka accept his resignation, Obama would open himself up to a barrage of criticism that he was firing the battle-hardened commanding general in Afghanistan during wartime, firing the man who was one of the architects of the recent surge, and undermining our chances for success and victory in that war.
With the rules of engagement in place there, rules which discourage fighting by our soldiers and which offer medals for combat avoidance, there is little chance that we will emerge victorious, anyway.
However, Obama did fire McChrystal, aka accepted his resignation, and did so in a manner which preserves the dignity and authority of the office of the presidency at the same time it caused no great harm to our war effort.
He succeeded in doing that by replacing McChrystal with the only man who made sense as a replacement, another battle-hardened soldier, General David Petraeus, head of the United States Central Command. Petraeus was the object of the left's scathing and scurrilous attacks after the Iraq surge in 2007 in which the left of the left, Moveon.org stooped to labelling him "General Betrayus."
Incidentally, that massive increase in troops, the surge as ordered by President Bush and executed by Petraeus, proved the difference in Iraq and we are as close to victory in that war as is reasonable to assume of any war in the Mideast. Incidentally, too, the current vice-president Joe Biden opposed both surges.
Another incidental: Then-senator and presidential-wannabe Barack Obama strongly opposed the 2007 Iraq surge, saying it was problematic and, before it was fully implemented deemed it a failure, contending it was "not working." When the reverse turned out to be the case, all of that was scratched from his website and replaced with commendations for the troops: http://tiny.cc/kw30j
With all that as background known by General McChrystal as he flew the long hours from Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan to Washington Dulles International, one has to wonder what went through the general's mind.
He had already abjectly apologized for his Rolling Stone remarks without referencing any specific comments he had made. He had not reiterated his view that Obama and Biden were closet morons. He had already heard that Obama had said he exercised "poor judgment" and "immaturity."
If Barack Obama, a guy who came closest to having executive experience when he was a Chicago community organizer, who knew as much about the military as Jane Fonda or Snoopy, who has as much respect for our military as Bill Clinton who "loathed" it, who was about to end his long and illustrious career, could rip him, the general must have been thinking whether he would be within his rights to deck the commander-in-chief.
Instead, he obsequiously resigned but that fly on the wall recorded McChrystal's meeting with Obama. The recording isn't pretty but it is reflective of what Stanley was thinking when he met Barry.
More about those thoughts in Part Two.
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