Do They No Longer Care? Coming Apart At the Seams

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Upon reading portions of General Stanley McChrystal's, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, Rolling Stone interview detailing his differences with President Obama and his outright defiance of the Chief Executive - a first in history I believe since General Douglas MacArthur did the same to President Harry Truman - I found myself wondering: "Do they no longer care?" I mean I know that there is a large amount of contempt for anyone (other than Dumbya) who thinks they can serve as President without putting in a serious stint with the military, but really. Or do you think this guy just wants to get fired before the Afghan War reaches its logical culmination (after the surge's predictable loss of steam) in the death of another empire? On his shoulders?

"How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.

"The dinner comes with the position, sir," says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.

McChrystal turns sharply in his chair.

"Hey, Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the position?"

McChrystal gives him the middle finger.

No one is more political than a top general (see any military history book although Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove may also provide a few touch points), but I'm guessing the brand of mayhem he had planned for the civilians of Afghanistan was beyond even that envisioned by President Obama who although he was perfectly content to bomb them back to the beginning of time with the drone attacks decided that McChrystal should be:

. . . summoned to Washington to explain derogatory comments about President Barack Obama and his colleagues, administration officials said Tuesday.

. . . The Rolling Stone profile, titled "The Runaway General," emerged from several weeks of interviews and travel with McChrystal's tight circle of aides this spring.

You gotta give this guy props for acting like what he did was somehow an emotional response that he couldn't stop himself from spouting - at the top level of the military no less (did I mention Dr. Strangelove?). You just gotta love that PR. (Wish I'd gone to work for a marketing firm as it's obviously pretty easy money.)

The interview describes McChrystal, 55, as "disappointed" in his first Oval Office meeting with Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the two failed to connect from the start. Obama appointed McChrystal to lead the Afghan effort in May 2009. Last fall, though, Obama called McChrystal on the carpet for speaking too bluntly about his desire for more troops.

"I found that time painful," McChrystal said in the article, on newsstands Friday. "I was selling an unsellable position."

You've also got to consider McChrystal's past, don't you, before thinking you understand the whole schmear. It's not like he hasn't been here before (although, of course, not at that time competing for the title of Payoff King). (Emphasis marks added - Ed.)

McChrystal has a history of drawing criticism, despite his military achievements.

In June 2006 President George W. Bush congratulated McChrystal for his role in the operation that killed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. As head of the special operations command, McChrystal's forces included the Army's clandestine counterterrorism unit, Delta Force.

He drew criticism for his role in the military's handling of the friendly fire shooting of Army Ranger Pat Tillman - a former NFL star - in Afghanistan. An investigation at the time found that McChrystal was "accountable for the inaccurate and misleading assertions" contained in papers recommending that Tillman get a Silver Star award.

McChrystal acknowledged he had suspected several days before approving the Silver Star citation that Tillman might have died by fratricide, rather than enemy fire. He sent a memo to military leaders warning them of that, even as they were approving Tillman's Silver Star. Still, he told investigators he believed Tillman deserved the award.

This week's development comes as criminal investigators are said to be examining allegations that Afghan security firms have been extorting as much as $4 million a week from contractors paid with U.S. tax dollars and then funneling the spoils to warlords and the Taliban, according to a U.S. military document. The payments are intended to ensure safe passage through dangerous areas they control.

The payments reportedly end up in insurgent hands through a $2.1 billion Pentagon contract to transport food, water, fuel and ammunition to American troops stationed at bases across Afghanistan.

So there's that. But I'm sure he meant no disrepect to his Commander in Chief, who after all appointed him (as if Obama hadn't been trying hard enough to please the hard right military-industrial thugs), and I'm not suggesting a coming coup, but it sure looks suspicious to me. Kinda Seven Days in May-ish. Brrrr. More on this later.

General James Mattoon Scott: And if you want to talk about your oath of office, I'm here to tell you face to face, President Lyman, that you violated that oath when you stripped this country of its muscles - when you deliberately played upon the fear and fatigue of the people and told them they could remove that fear by the stroke of a pen. And then when this nation rejected you, lost faith in you, and began militantly to oppose you, you violated that oath by not resigning from office and turning the country over to someone who could represent the people of the United States.

President Jordan Lyman: And that would be General James Mattoon Scott, would it? I don't know whether to laugh at that kind of megalomania, or simply cry.

You have to play this turn of events off against the reality that confronts those of us having to live in the rapidly deteriorating conditions within the USA today (versus those inhabiting the goldmine development areas of Iraq and Afghanistan) to get a true picture of of what's really happening. Bob Herbert speaks for us today in When Greatness Slips Away:

As a nation, we are becoming more and more accustomed to a sense of helplessness. We no longer rise to the great challenges before us. It’s not just that we can’t plug the oil leak, which is the perfect metaphor for what we’ve become. We can’t seem to do much of anything.

. . . The collapse of the economy in the Great Recession gave us the starkest, most painful evidence imaginable of the failure of laissez-faire economics and the destructive force of the alliance of big business and government against the interests of ordinary Americans. Radical change was called for. (One thinks of Franklin Roosevelt raging against the “economic royalists” and asserting that “we need to correct, by drastic means if necessary, the faults in our economic system from which we now suffer.”)

But there has been no radical change, only caution and timidity and more of the same. The royalists remain triumphant and working people are absorbing blow after devastating blow. More than 1.2 million of the long-term jobless are due to lose their unemployment benefits this month.

Please read the whole essay for yourself. It seems to me to have captured the essence of what most of us are thinking about constantly today - not military game playing and terrorist taunting. Suzan P.S. And why really is Rahm announcing his departure so early? ______________