Once again, the Commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is injecting himself into the debate over which policy he will ultimately enforce:
LONDON — The top military commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, rejected calls for scaling down military objectives there on Thursday and said Washington did not have unlimited time to settle on a new strategy to pursue the eight-year-old war.
In a speech to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a private policy group here, General McChrystal said that the situation in Afghanistan was serious and that “neither success nor failure can be taken for granted.”
He was speaking in Britain — America’s close ally in Afghanistan — a day after he had participated by video link from London in a White House strategy session on the war that included President Obama, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and an array of senior advisers.
General McChrystal was asked by a member of an audience that included retired military commanders and security specialists whether he would support an idea put forward by Mr. Biden to scale back the American military presence in Afghanistan to focus on tracking down the leaders of Al Qaeda, in place of the current broader effort now under way to defeat the Taliban.
“The short answer is: no,” he said. “You have to navigate from where you are, not where you wish to be. A strategy that does not leave Afghanistan in a stable position is probably a short-sighted strategy.”
He did not mention Mr. Biden by name.
(…)
sked if a refusal to give him more troops would lead to failure in Afghanistan, he said: “I think if you don’t align the goals and the resources, you will have a significant problem. If we don’t do that, we will.
This latest statement is of a piece with McChrystal’s other recent actions ranging from the leaking of his supposedly confidential report to the Joint Chiefs, to the rumors that he might resign if his recommendations are not followed, to his recent comments regarding how often he’s met with the President.
All of it raises a question of whether McChrystal is delving into areas that military officers ought to stay away from:
This isn’t exactly Douglas MacArthur territory. Obama has yet to outline a competing strategic vision and McChrystal is essentially just making a full-throated defense of the doctrine he was sent to carry out. But it does put his commander-in-chief in a rather awkward position.
His approach is at stark contrast to that of Kip Ward, commander of United States Africa Command, who repeatedly deflected questions about strategic priorities in his Atlantic Council appearance earlier in the week. Each time such a query was posed, he simply noted that he takes his orders from the president and the secretary of defense.
Somewhere in between these tacks strikes me as the proper mode for four-star commanders. They should work within the commander’s intent — which in McChrystal’s case means that of CENTCOM chief David Petraeus as well as the president and SECDEF — but also use their professionaljudgment in how best to carry out their mission. When it’s obvious that the president and his senior advisors are seriously considering a major policy change, however, it’s probably best for the generals to provide their inputs in private to risk giving the appearance of undermining civilian control of policy.
McChrystal is coming very, very close to crossing that line. If he wants to speak out about policy, he should resign his commission and run for political office. Until then, he’s a uniformed officer duty bound to follow the orders of his superiors and the Commander in Chief. Its time for him to shut up and sit down.
October 1st, 2009 at 7:52 pm
This is a crabbed and unrealistic view of the role and responsibility of a high-level operational commander in the modern world. Gen. McChrystal is as much a “policy maker” in every sense of that term as, say, Secretary Clinton. The military effort over which he presides is not like Mark Clark’s in Italy in 1943. Clark had only to march his army forward toward Rome. McChrystal’s task is vastly more complex, with political dimensions involving Afghans, Pakistan, NATO allies and others. Besides, the President already enunciated in March US policy and appointed McChrystal as the right man to carry it out. So far as I know, McChrysta has not said or done anything that might undermine that policy (MacArthur, in contrast, deliberately flouted direct instructions from commanders above him, as well as making public pronouncements at odds with settled US policy).
Perhaps most important, it is foolish to insist that senior uniformed commanders behave like saluting automatons lacking opinions of their own. The sequel to Rumsfeld’s publicly rebuking the Army Chief af Staff for asserting that occupying Iraq would require 300,000 troops was the sad spectacle of Gen. Casey and Gen. Abizaid running the Iraq war through three years of chaos without a murmer of protest to the effect that their mission was “undersourced,” as it plainly was.
It’s not an accident that Casey, rather than being relieved, was promoted into the job of Army Chief of Staff. As CoS, Casey is reported to be the sole high-ranking officer who has cast doubt on the urgency of McChrystal’s request. Old habits die hard, and now Casey has a new bunch of pols to stroke.
Be grateful that McChrystal does not view his responsibilities as Casey did his.
October 1st, 2009 at 8:16 pm
“Perhaps most important, it is foolish to insist that senior uniformed commanders behave like saluting automatons lacking opinions of their own.”
Publicly, that’s exactly what they need to be. Privately, they should be banging their shoes on the table advocating for what they feel is best, but once a decision has been made it’s time to shut up, salute, and carry out your orders. If you can’t do that, then you resign. There is no middle ground.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:07 am
As to Mike’s point, I can only reiterate that McChrystal has not said or done anything that contradicts established US policy or so far as we know any orders he received. Indeed, what he said in London was in line with what the President said in March and again in April when he named McChrystal commander.
What Doug and Mike seem to be saying is that’s not good enough: McChrystal must anticipate what the President might say in a few weeks when a new decision may or may not be made and support it — or else shut up, say nothing.
This is where you veer toward a proposition that simply does not and canot mesh with the responsibilities of a commander in a conflict of this kind in this day and age. Everyone involved — NATO governmental and military leaders, the Afghan governmet, the Pakistanisn the world press, as well as Americans, want to know what McChrystal thinks about a great many things. Telling them and encouraging and maintaining their help and support is an intrinsic part of his role. A general lacking the ability to shoulder this role or who resists it would be a disaster.
As I’ve said, Casey was a disaster for just that reason. He kept his head down, issues anodyne “light at the end of the tunnel” statements, and parroted the administration’s line when asked. You don’t really want a repeat of that.
Your objections are, of course, exactly why members of Congress want McChrystal to testify. In Congressional testimony, a officer has a clear obligation to tell the truth and give his best unvarnished advice, even if it contradicts the White House. Perhaps that is the only way to resolve this.
October 2nd, 2009 at 1:39 am
I want to make one more important thing clear: the appearance of McChrystal diverging from Obama on this rests on news reoorts in which unnamed sources claim that Joe Biden (who not incidentally is not McChrystal’s superior) and others are arguing for a light footprint approach. Maybe, but maybe not. Apart from all other issues, I don’t see why McChrystal needs to feel bound by anonymously sourced planted or leaked stories when he can read what Obama has said publicly. Again, nothing he said contradicts those public policy statements.
Besides, while McChrystal may not have spoken often with ObamaN presumably he speaks regularly with Gen. Petreaus and frequently with the JCS, Ambassador Eikenberry, Ambassador Holbrooke and others and has a pretty good grasp of what he should or should not say to fulfill his resposibilities.
October 2nd, 2009 at 6:54 am
So you want a double talking, stand for nothing, bend with the political winds general. Where is Colin Powell when you need him?
October 2nd, 2009 at 7:04 am
No, I want a General who stays out of policy debates and follows orders, like he’s supposed to.
October 2nd, 2009 at 8:33 am
If I recall correctly, Military Officers take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies, both foreign and domestic and do not take an oath of allegiance to the President. Which is as it should be. We have plenty of domestic enemies in Congress and the Whitehorse who are just as dangerous as any enemy on the battlefield. Shut up, salute and follow your orders brought us Vietnam. General officers are politicians in uniform and they have an obligation to speak out. They help shape policy and if they can’t influence policy and then carry it out they should retire – then raise hell.
October 2nd, 2009 at 9:43 am
It wasn’t that long ago that Patreus was lauded for dropping his backpack to act as a strategist and policy wonk, leading us out of the darkness in Iraq. I don’t think we can have it both ways, asking the military for strategic leadership and at the same time demanding reflexive obedience to political manuevering. The military at least knows how to be strategic.
And let me repeat, I don’t think there is any way that McChrystal is saying what he is saying without the support of his superiors. Everything he has said to this point is within the framework of the strategy and policy he was directed to implement after his predecessor was unceremoniously fired. He has not disobeyed orders, not one iota as far as I can tell.
Now it seems like Obama after asking the military to flop, will be returning to flip. Or maybe something else. Looks to me like there are three strategic options here, Iraq I, Iraq II and the Rumsfeld Doctrine. And we may see all three prosecuted within a single year udner the Obama regime.