The old saying, “The truth will set you free” is not always true. A lot of people don’t know that when it comes to insubordination in the military, the truth is no defense. In an ordinary court case, if you testify truthfully that it was your, “skinny, know nothing, inexperienced yet arrogant boss who caused the down fall of the company,” the jury will weigh your testimony and if appropriate find in your behalf.
In the military, if you call your boss a skinny, know nothing, inexperienced yet arrogant SOB who is causing the down fall of the country, your guilty of insubordination even if the boss is 40 pounds under weight, doesn’t know anything, has no practical experience yet acts as if he is the second coming and is the off-spring of a dog. It makes no difference. Insubordination – anything that undermines the commander’s legal authority - is prohibited.
This is the jam Gen. Stanley McChrystal finds himself in. He spouts off – truthfully one supposes – that the administration and congress are filled with clueless buffoons making his job more difficult. Well OK. But part of the military man’s mission is to deal with clueless buffoons and still get the job done. And if you cannot get the job done, you send a letter to the boss detailing the problems. If nothing happens, you send another letter – your resignation.
What you shouldn’t do is publicly ridicule the Commander in Chief and other public officials while on active duty. There will be plenty of time for that kind of thing after your letter of resignation is accepted. Once a military man is returned to civilian life he can within reason recount the ineptitude of the commander and offer his own ingenious solutions. Recall there was a whole line of retired flag officers telling Bush what he ought to do.
What makes this more interesting to Lex is that McChrystal is P-BO’s man. P-BO relieved the Bush guy in Afghanistan to make way for McChrystal. Now it seems neither is happy with the arrangement. You might understand this kind of thing were it some Bush holdover whose Afghan policy was to “kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out” that was causing a problem. That’s not the case. This is P-BO’s man who has emplaced a P-BO strategy to win the hearts and minds of the Afghan people.
The MSM is awash with stories of what a great soldier McChrystal has been. On the whole that may be true, but Lex has been critical before of the Afghan rules of engagement that encourage terrorists to fire on US forces from the sanctuary civilian home or mosque knowing it would take an act of congress for the Americans to return fire. But what do I know of these things. Come to think of it, probably a hell of a lot more than the Commander in Chief.
We should also remember this. McChrystal first became famous for telling 60 Minutes that he had had only one meeting with the president after nearly 3 months on the job, after being appointed the Afghan commander. There’s the problem right there. Were McChrystal able to pass his concerns up the chain of command early and often he might not feel as though he needed to vent his frustrations through 60 Minutes and Rolling Stone.
Anyway this thing goes, it’s a mess. I think McChrystal has to be fired. Commanders cannot be allowed to say the things McCrystal and his staff have been reported to have said about their civilian leadership and stay on – even if, as in this case, they are true. If McChrysal goes, the Afghan theater will be in further confusion for months. If P-BO allows McChrystal to stay on he can expect much more of the same – from anonymous sources – in the future. Now you know why the military has these rules. For the good of the force and the nation. By his remarks, truthfull or not, McChrystal has threatened what little chance we have to achieve success in Afghanistan.
Now we need a new commander and new strategy.
Add this to the never ending list of things that P-BO is totally unqualified to handle.
See? Had McCrystal uttered that truth to Rolling Stone, he could be fired for insubordination.
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