[A-List] Fwd: [R-G] McChrystal v Obama & Co.

Tue Jun 22 12:00:37 MDT 2010

Well, the need for examining all the diagreements in this war that is
in it's tenth year is over-riding!  McCrystal's interview was a
successful effort to get the issues of note out there.  Tragicly there
are Military millions who will die to hide the disagreements and the
facts as transparentcy will dilute their power.  I think both men know
the need to debate openly the war problems and strategies, future.
Obama's alarm at the overweening assumptions of US Mitiary power may
blind him to the necessity of what Mc Chrystal has started.  One hopes
not.  True debate can be messy, as can life itself.   Suzanne

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear at hunterbear.org>
Date: Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 3:52 PM
Subject: [R-G] McChrystal v Obama & Co.
To: Suzanne  de Kuyper <suzannedk at gmail.com>
Cc: newgreencanada at yahoogroups.com, marxist at yahoogroups.com

I awoke early this morning to hear this on every major news media
outlet.  Rarely have I seen, in these past several years, such a
degree of frenetic excitement across the entire "mainline" political
spectrum.  My first reaction which still does more than linger within
me calls up the old saw, "The wolves devour one another."  [I
apologize to the wolves, which I like -- save the Lupus version which,
of course, isn't a real wolf.]  And, of course, Barack Obama is no
wolf at all.  If I don't like The Generals, and I don't, I do have a
certain grudging respect for many of  them as people.  I have little
respect at all for Obama whose basic intelligence and human empathy
come off as contrived and mediocre -- a man, crafty and cunning, and
certainly articulate  -- but who epitomizes an Ego that has far outrun
its capabilities.

The massive and thoroughly surreal -- and unwinnable --
Afghan/Pakistan War [and, to that, add Iraq as well] is, of course the
horrific headwaters of this -- in our time now -- the tragedy without
parallel.

H.

General recalled to Washington over remarks
Rolling Stone quotes McChrystal aides mocking Biden, envoy Holbrooke
NBC, msnbc.com and news services
updated 5:34 a.m. MT, Tues., June 22, 2010
WASHINGTON - The top U.S. commander in Afghanistan was summoned to
Washington Tuesday to explain his controversial comments about
colleagues in a recent interview.

The move came hours after General Stanley McChrystal apologized for
comments by his aides insulting some of President Barack Obama's
closest advisers in an article to be published in Rolling Stone
magazine.

In the magazine profile, his aides are quoted mocking Vice President
Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for
Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The article depicts McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many
important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince
even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war.

'Wimps in the White House'
McChrystal was quoted as saying he felt betrayed by the man the White
House chose to be his diplomatic partner, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry.

The article also claims McChrystal has seized control of the war "by
never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White
House."

Citing a senior Obama administration official, NBC News reported
Tuesday that McChrystal had been ordered to fly home from Afghanistan
to attend a meeting at the White House's Situation Room where he would
be asked to explain his comments.

NBC News said that McChrystal had personally called Defense Secretary
Robert Gates and Biden to apologize.

Earlier Tuesday, McChrystal issued a statement saying: "I extend my
sincerest apology for this profile. It was a mistake reflecting poor
judgment and should never have happened.

"Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal
honor and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article
falls far short of that standard," he added.

Workaholic
McChrystal, a workaholic said to sleep just four hours a day, was
brought into Afghanistan a year ago after his predecessor was pushed
out.

In Rolling Stone, McChrystal is described by an aide as "disappointed"
in his first Oval Office meeting with an unprepared President Barack
Obama. The article says that although McChrystal voted for Obama, the
two failed to connect from the start. Obama called McChrystal on the
carpet last fall 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."

Obama agreed to dispatch an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to
Afghanistan only after months of study that many in the military found
frustrating. And the White House's troop commitment was coupled with a
pledge to begin bringing them home in July 2011, in what
counterinsurgency strategists advising McChrystal regarded as an
arbitrary deadline.

McChrystal said Tuesday, "I have enormous respect and admiration for
President Obama and his national security team, and for the civilian
leaders and troops fighting this war and I remain committed to
ensuring its successful outcome."

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

The article portrays McChrystal's team as disapproving of the Obama
administration, with the exception of Secretary of State Hillary
Clinton, who backed McCrystal's request for additional troops in
Afghanistan.

It quotes a member of McChrystal's team making jokes about Biden, who
was seen as critical of the general's efforts to escalate the conflict
and who had favored a more limited counter-terrorism approach.

"Biden?" the aide was quoted as saying. "Did you say: Bite me?"

Biden initially opposed McChrystal's proposal for additional forces
last year. He favored a narrower focus on hunting terrorists.

If Eikenberry had the same doubts, McChrystal said he never expressed
them until a leaked internal document threw a wild card into the
debate over whether to add more troops last November. In the document,
Eikenberry said Afghan President Hamid Karzai was not a reliable
partner for the counterinsurgency strategy McChrystal was hired to
execute.

McChrystal said he felt "betrayed" and accused the ambassador of
giving himself cover.

"Here's one that covers his flank for the history books," McChrystal
told the magazine. "Now, if we fail, they can say 'I told you so.'"

There was no immediate response from Eikenberry. The Associated Press
requested comment through an aide after business hours on Monday in
Kabul.

Public rift
Eikenberry remains in his post in Kabul, and although both men
publicly say they are friends, their rift is on full display.

McChrystal and Eikenberry, himself a retired Army general, stood as
far apart as the speakers' platform would allow during a White House
news conference last month.

Another aide called White House National Security Adviser Jim Jones, a
retired four star general, a "clown" who was "stuck in 1985."

The piece also quoted an adviser to McChrystal dismissing an early
meeting with Obama as a "10-minute photo op."

"Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. The boss
was pretty disappointed," the adviser told the magazine.

'Wounded animal'
Some of the strongest criticism was reserved for Holbrooke, Obama's
special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

"The boss says he's like a wounded animal," a member of the general's
team is quoted as saying. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's
going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous."

Rolling Stone interviewed troops frustrated by McChrystal's strict
rules for combat that are intended to reduce the number of civilian
casualties.

At one outpost, a soldier McChrystal had met earlier was killed in a
house that the local U.S. commander had repeatedly asked to destroy.
The request was denied, apparently out of concern that razing the
house would anger locals whose allegiance the U.S. is trying to win.

"Does that make any (expletive) sense?" Pfc. Jared Pautsch asks. "We
should just drop a (expletive) bomb on this place. You sit and ask
yourself, 'What are we doing here?'"

NBC News' Savannah Guthrie and Norah O'Donnell, The Associated Press
and Reuters contributed to this report.
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37839756/ns/politics-white_house/

HUNTER GRAY [HUNTER BEAR/JOHN R SALTER JR] Mi'kmaq /St. Francis
Abenaki/St. Regis Mohawk
Protected by Na´shdo´i´ba´i´
and Ohkwari'

Our Hunterbear website is now more than ten years old.
It contains a vast amount of social justice material -- including
grassroots activist organizing. Check out http://hunterbear.org/directory.htm

See:  Forest Fires In The West [with much personal experience and
reflection]: http://hunterbear.org/forest_fires_in_the_west.htm

And See: Hunter Bear's Movement Life Interview:
http://hunterbear.org/HUNTER%20BEAR%20INTERVIEW%20CRMV.htm

See: The Stormy Adoption of an Indian Child [My Father] and its
accompanying essay on Minority Adoptions and Native Land
and Resources:
http://hunterbear.org/James%20and%20Salter%20and%20Dad.htm
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