McChrystal Relieved of Command for Cause

McChrystal Relieved of Command for Cause

 Also read:  What_a_War_Against_Iran_for_the_Zionists_Would_Look_Like

McChrystal’s claim to fame was in conducting assassinations.  He was in charge of a group of people who went and killed people as part of our foreign policy.  Imagine if the leaders from fifty other countries of the world decided it was time to start bumping off U.S. politicians.  Okay, maybe it is a good idea if some other countries starting bumping off the politicians from this country.  I, for one, would never hold it against any country for deciding to rid the world of Obama, Bush, Biden, Clinton, Cheney, Emmanuel, or Rumsfeld.  Politicians’ success has always been in making us think we need them.  I would like to see it proved otherwise.

McChrystal was the key figure in the Pat Tillman coverup.  It was only because he was feeding into Bush’s disinformation campaign that his military career survived.  His lies are documented here.  The really powerful peice is where his brother is testifying in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee as to the lies that took place under McCrystal.

 He also was able to get away with condoning torture. An article addressing this issue is linked below. It is a shame lowly enlisted soldiers were jailed while the military superiors and politicians in Washington who made torture U.S. policy were allowed to go free. Moreover, the soldiers who were court martialed were not the ones who were murdering Iraqis in the prisons, of course this was done by the CIA. Here is an article regarding McCrystal and torture.

andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/stanley-mcchrystal-a-history-of-torture.html

Many people were amazed McChrystal’s insults to the current administration had not already resulted in his getting fired much earlier. Many of his comments were hidden until he decided to give a Rolling Stone reporter full access, but that was not the beginning of his blunders. McChrystal’s gaffe’s started when it became apparent he had no plan on how to use the 30,000 extra soldiers he was given. When asked what his strategy for Afghanistan was, he had none. He was then asked what metric he would use to determine progress. He had none. He was then asked what end state he was working to achieve. He could not name it. He was then asked for an exit strategy. He had none. So, this was our great warrior who was going to win Afghanistan? Then, he finally sold us on the “Long War” strategy. The “Long War” strategy has never worked in the history of the world and dooms a nation to defeat.  The side that wins an insurgency is the side that controls the gene pool.

McChrystal’s hagiographers babbled about the revolutionary COIN strategy he was going to implement that was sure to win Afghanistan. McChrystal stated we could “measure success not by how many enemy we kill, but how many civilians we protect”. He then went on to be the biggest slaughterer of civilians in Afghanistan since operations began. He said he could not guarantee success with another 40,000 soldiers, but not sending them would guarantee failure. The question is: What would be needed to guarantee success and would it be sound strategy to pay that price? That is the information he should be supplying to Obama.

While all of the country is buying the latest edition of Rolling Stone  in which Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commander of US forces in Afghanistan, and his juvenile-sounding staff who call themselves “Team America”, mock Vice President Biden by nicknaming him “Joe Bite Me”, decry special envoy Richard Holbrooke and admit to not wanting to open his emails (“‘Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,’ he groans. ‘I don’t even want to open it.’”), and calls White House national security adviser Jim Jones, and ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry a “clown”. Not even the president is spared: McChrystal’s staff claims Obama was “intimidated” by the General, a charge that reinforces the neocon meme about the administration’s supposedly anti-military pseudo-pacifistic foreign policy.

 But this kind of stuff is not what Obama should be worried about.  What Obama should be concerned with is the way McChrystal lied to the press about the Marjah offensive saying he was attacking a city of 80,000 when it was rural villages of about 40,000 spread out over hundreds of square miles. It was the biggest fabrication since we invaded Iraq for WMDs. It was done for propaganda purposes to sell progress to the American public. He held a force ratio of 1 to 2 for the overall population, not a combat ratio of U.S. versus insurgents. With this ratio he still failed to secure the area. The failure of McChrystal’s COIN strategy was becoming the 600 lb. gorilla in the room. The more it was implemented, the less anyone wanted to talk about it.  By McChrystal’s lies should not surprise anyone.  Here he lies about the Pat Tillman fiasco:

His latest and greatest offensive fizzled away and was a “flash in the pan”. It ended up being suspended indefinitely and was found to be based on fantasy. When reality began biting McChrystal, the offensive was soon found to be operationally impossible to execute given the political and military situation in Afghanistan and was postponed indefinitely.

McChrystal’s staff then went on to leak things to the press to force Obama’s hand. McChrystal had proven deft at boxing in the Commander in Chief. The leaking by his staff of top secret documents should have led to court martials and Leavenworth. He then went on to show his disrespect for civilian rule over the military by meeting Obama in Washington D.C. in fatigues. The last gaffe had him and his staff mocking Biden. What should happen to soldiers who mock their superiors?

As far as McChrystal being indispensable, the graveyard is filled with indispensable people. His selling of the Afghan war to the public is a reprehensible act. He was on a fool’s errand and never complained because he loved the pay. Here is the latest description of Afghanistan from a few days ago since it has now turned into the longest war in U.S. history. This was written in the Rolling Stone article that got McCrystal fired:

“Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a “bleeding ulcer.” In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. 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.”

An unmentioned sore spot of McChrystal was the fact that Karl Eikenberry was a subordinate of McChrystal’s and now McCrystal reported to Eikenberry.  Eikenberry, in his confidential, make that Top Secret, cable to Obama explained why the war was unwinnable. He recommended getting out before things got worse and more people died for nothing. He explained that none of the objectives were achievable and it would take far more than what the U.S. could hope to supply in resources to even begin to turn the country around. He stated it was impossible for the U.S. to achieve any meaningful nation-building that would legitimize Karzi, his opium-dealing brother who has ties to the Taliban, or the warlords whose human rights abuses are more aptly described as crimes against humanity.

Somehow, this document was leaked to the press. Most intelligent people concur that the leak could have only occurred by McChrystal’s staff who felt Eikenberry was undercutting McChrystal and his chance for glory. If the firing of McChrystal will lead to a common sense assessment of the impossibility of creating civil government and its institutions through the use of organized violence, then the firing of McChrystal was the best thing that could happen to America. Military men are apt to overestimate what warfare can achieve, underestimate the unintended consequences, and are blind to second and third order effects as much as the government is.

One consideration never explored by our citizens, whose consent for war is manufactured by our corporate/military/industrial complex, is that our political leaders are slaves to public perception. Bush can now say he was not the one who lost Afghanistan, but Afghanistan was lost the day we starting launching million dollar cruise missiles against mud huts. There is no getting out and even if we lie to ourselves and Obama has his “Mission Accomplished” moment, it will last about 10 seconds, which is probably 5 seconds longer than the “Mayor of Kabal” will last after our exit.

The “Mayor of Kabal” term is used to describe Karzi because he cannot project any power outside of Kabal where he is holed up under the protection of U.S forces. The Taliban control more of the country now than at any time during the last eight years. The Taliban, just like the Afghan army, have frustrated the U.S. as they refuse to participate in major engagements, but unlike the Afghan army, the Taliban  will hit when they can, where they can, with what they can.  In the infantry, it has always been said the most dangerous weapon in the U.S. arsenal is the light infantry squad. It looks like that is also true for the Taliban who actually fire and maneuver with small unit attacks.

One thing is sure, if Obama had kept McChrystal as the imperium’s proconsul, ten years from now McChrystal would still be winning the war.

Now Petraus has been selected as the operation’s savior.  His plan in Iraq war to give the insurgents weapons, allow ethnic cleansing to seperate the sides, and then pay the non-al Qaeda to not fire on U.S. soldier.  This worked until the money ran out and after Petraus left, the situation exploded into sectarian violence.  As Petraus reviews the Rules of Enagagement prior to taking over for McChrystal, it is a certainty that the Iraq War will get a whole lot bloodier.  The question is: Will this bloodbath lead to the U.S. claiming victory and leaving, or to increased nation-building and troop commitments?

Note: To read and encyclopedia of information that chronicles the blunders of McChrystal and Petraus, go to Jeff Huber’s Pen and Sword at: zenhuber.blogspot.com/