So it looks like everyone is happy with McChrystal getting fired. As soon as I heard it, I thought Conservatives were going to have a field day jumping down Obama’s throat since they’re erupting in panic over something every day now, but they didn’t and now I’m kind of disappointed.
I mean, if you read the actual Rolling Stone article that got him fired, there’s nothing really that bad in it, just the typical disdain military types usually have for politicians. it wasn’t even McChrystal who said most of the stuff, just that he’d rather “get his ass kicked” by a room full of people than go to some political dinner. It was his aides who said the dinner was “fucking gay,” called Biden “Bite Me,” and said some other general is a “clown” who’s “stuck in 1985.”
That’s what jeopardized the mission? Democrats are glad he’s gone because he’s the same guy who politicized Pat Tillman’s friendly fire death by lying to the media (and if he was going to get fired, that more than making some disparaging remarks should have done it, but that was even before Obama hired him). And I guess Republicans are okay with it because they’re the only ones who should be attacking Obama. I can’t believe they aren’t accusing Obama of using it as an excuse to fire him for other reasons, because that’s what it looks like to me. Instead, Republicans are calling for him to also get rid of some ambassadors while he’s cleaning house. Some sources say McChrystal hasn’t been delivering, so maybe everyone’s using it as an excuse.
As Matt Taibbi points out, all this childish business with name calling obscured the real point of the Rolling Stone article, that while Obama had campaigned on a focused on defeating al-Qaida, he instead turned around and implemented McChrystal’s COunter-INsurgency program, or COIN, aimed at sending huge numbers of ground troops to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild the government, “a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve.” In other words, that nation building stuff that Conservatives supposedly hate. This is the second general in Afghanistan to be fired in 13 months, which can’t be a great help to troop morale. I do think we should get out of Afghanistan, but if we’re going to stay in, then we probably shouldn’t be doing all this shoe-changing.
I know that the strategy is supposedly not changing, but doesn’t changing the person running the war pretty much ensure that at least part of the micromanagement strategy is going to change? But it’s like no one really cares about that stuff: it’s just “how will this affect Obama,” blah, blah, blah. I mean, does it even matter who we have running the show or is all this stupid religious reverence towards McChrystal and Petraeus just theater? Either it does matter, which means the strategy will ultimately change with the person calling the shots, or it doesn’t matter, and they’re just military figureheads used as a political tool.
Another funny thing is how the media is taking it: terribly. It’s sad to see journalists heap so much hate on a music magazine just because they got scooped. So you get people like Lara Logan complaining that Hastings must have broken some confidentiality agreement in order to get a story like that. Actually, the reason Hastings was able to get so much time with the general is because Iceland’s volcano grounded both Hastings and McChrstal’s team in Paris, so Team America spent the down time drinking Bud Light Lime. But even if he did break confidentiality, so what? Don’t we want reporters who are on our side and not the side of the celebrity in order to preserve access?
Bill O’Reilly, no doubt jealously wishing he had done the story, called Hastings “despicable” and a “weasel” and yet didn’t even have a problem with McChrystal being fired because, as he said, there was a rumor that McChrystal doesn’t watch Fox News, which is of course completely unforgivable. According to O’Reilly, “You live by the liberal sword, you die by the liberal sword.” So even when both sides agree with a decision, we still have to frame the story in this ridiculous partisan way.
Meanwhile, the CIA says that there are only 50 to 100 members of al-Qaida left in Afghanistan, and yet we’re going to be spending $100 billion a year, or $1 billion dollars for every member of al-Qaida. Corruption has gotten so bad that more declared cash flies out of Kabul each year than the Afghan government collects in tax and customs revenue nationwide. President Karzai, who we are propping up despite the fact he stole the election, said twice that he might join the Taliban. He’s also on heroin, which, as we know, is his brother’s business and which the army is protecting. Even when $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits are discovered, it’s seen as a bad thing because it will just lead to the kind of war profiteering that decimated African nations (though as usual, Christopher Hitchens sees it differently). Although the minerals were found in 2007, the news of this was only just released after Afghanistan became America’s longest war ever. Even RNC Chairman Michael Steele has come out against continuing in Afghanistan, and is so being called to step down by William Kristol for “politicizing the war.”
The question is, who wants to continue throwing hundreds of loves and billions of dollars on a pointless perpetual war against a non-industrialized nation over 50-100 men? I kept hearing how Bush’s fatal flaw in Iraq was disbanding the Ba’ath party just because they were Saddam’s party, yet we’re doing the exact same thing with the Taliban when everyone knows the Taliban is still going to be there a year from now when we are planning to pull out. Just let Karzai ally up with them and put our war of revenge behind us.
Update: Christopher Hitchens suggests he be sent to help the drawdown in Iraq.
