Beware of silencing the military

The war advisers should offer their opinion in private. After all, most of the top level discussions about
war games, or war policy are classified matters. And if one war adviser doesn't agree with the majority of other advisers, yes, I am talking about General McChrystal here, he cannot go out and launch a public campaign
in the media and in speeches to "push" his view as the best option - against the majority opinion.

But above all, there is a chain of command, and a hierarchy in the military that mandates that "opinions and suggestions COME UP" from regional commanders to the General Staff, and from there, after consultations with the civilian leadership, "orders authorizing or rejecting the requests GO DOWN." General McChrystal is 6th
in the Chain of Command, with Obama first, Biden -nominally-second, Defense Secetary Robert Gates, third, Joint Chief of Staff, Admiral Mullen, 4th, and David Patraeus 5th. McChrysrtal, therefore, reports to General Patraeus, and by-passing all his superior and taking the matter of his recommendation to the media to make it stick by the force of media headlines, is in my opinion insubordination. {Note: I have served in the military myself}.

But McChrystal has been portrayed as a "military genius" by the media after his appointment to the Afghan post, and he certainly thought that he had enough public clout to prevail above all his superiors. Egotistical attitude? Certainly! Is his 10-year plan for Afghanistan the best? Not really. And for historians who know better, it is actually a copy of General Westmorland's Vietnam strategy that failed miserably. He might be the "darling of the press" because the press is enamored with his image, but in
the Afghan war that image is worthless because Afghans are 100% different people than we are. And if he is not enamored by the Afghans, his 10-year plan will have no other result than 10-years of more war until the
Vietnam rationality kicks in.

Looking back at the egotistical style of another General, Douglas McCarthur, during the Korean War, one can see how his shortsightedness to push further into North Korea caused China to unleashed 300.000 troops against the U.S. advancing force into North Korea, which then forced the invading American army to scatter in disarray while it retreated hastily. And when McCarthur realized that his plan backfired, and insisted on a plan to nuke North Korea and the large Chinese force there, president Truman told him publicly "You are fired." Harry Truman was looking for a way to end the war, not to expand it. And that is what Baraq Obama should be looking for - not expand the war, as McChrystal is blathering about.

The Epilogue, and the Moral of the Story: When an army General become a loose canon while on duty, and General McChrystal has become one, it is time for his replacement. In every war in history, with the possible exception of Adolf Hitler, the "do's" and "don'ts" were never based solely on the ideas or on the capriciousness of ONE person only! Nikos Retsos, retired professor

Your title is misleading. No one is silencing the generals; only reminding everyone there is a chain-of-command.

There seems to be a precident for this: earlier under the Bush White House, fair hair general Petraeus seems to have been encouraged to do business behind his CENTCOM's back and beat the drum in public for his commander-in-chief.

Someone should have put a stop to this. It sets a bad example for future commanders like McChrystal. Who may have allowed his independent mind-set, something looked for in individuals with his special operations background, to run naively amok, having picked up a bad habit from Petraeus.

You send in a neurologist and his solution is major surgery.
You send in a death squads commander (McCrystal) and he wants 40K more boots on the ground to continue the killing.
Why not send in Bishop Tutu and Jimmy Carter and get us the hell out of this useless war - (I mean, are the Taliban's ICBM's going to take out NYC? Send in UAL's spraying weaponized Ebola viruses over San Francisco? Invade AmeriKKKa?).

AmeriKKKa, (along with its Jewish hemmoroid) has become the greatest threat to peace in the world, as polled in the EU last year.

TheAZCowBoy
Tombstone, AZ.

The Robinson piece decries criticism in public, not all criticism. Shinseki did no criticising in public. The most-discussed Shinseki communication is, of course, his response to Levin's questioning in a Senate hearing - a direct answer to a direct question from a member of congress.

If that's the best you can come up with, your suggestion of hypocrisy comes up short.

You called Eugene Robinson's article in the Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/05/AR2009100502241.html "ignorant and offensive...." and gave it the misleading title of "shut-up and salute." I think you missed the rather balanced points in that article.....
(a) The opinion of the military is critical but should always be private NOT public when sensitive political questions are in play. No one wants to muzzle the military
(b)Regardless of what Mr. Robinson's personal views on a military question are, he maintains that he is against public participation of the military in political affairs---whether that military be American, British or wherever
(c)There is a clear separation of roles and responsibilities when it comes to crafting strategy and executing them.

You seem to come from the school of thought that feels that an airline CEO should face public dissent from the head of the pilots union just because the latter knows about flying and the CEO does not. If the question at hand is the right tyres to use, best speed to fly in turbulence or other tactical questions then any CEO (or president) foolish ennough to get into a position where the chief pilot has to take to the airwaves to drive home his points deserves what he gets. However, if the question is which routes to fly, crew levels per flight, right hedging price for jetfuel and how many landing slots to buy, the pilots opinion could still be very critical PRIVATELY. It is a testament to a CEO's calm temperament if he allows public dissent along strategic lines from line staff. Obama has given his man in Afghanistan a really long rope. I'll like to see anyone try that with Ronald Reagan or FDR.

Gates comments were appropriate and called for as were those of Security Adivsor James Jones (he served as Commander, United States European Command and Supreme Allied Commander Europe from 2003 to 2006 and as the 32nd Commandant of the Marine Corps from July 1999 to January 2003).

They both recognize (as does everyone at the Pentagon and DOD)McChrystal jumped the chain of command.

It is never a mistake to remind our generals that elected civilian leadership make policy and generals salute and carry out the mission to support that policy—not the other way round.

Recording the current high level of public respect for the military has little or nothing to do with things as they necessarily should be. Dreadful perversions in public policy flowed from this during the Bush II administration: politicians who wanted forces in Iraq and Afghanistan better physically protected from harm at enemy hands were more or less stifled: the Pentagon had made its decision, for example, about whether the men in the front line were wearing adequate bullet protection -- which they weren't. Respect for the military meant that private citizens were paying up for buying better-quality flak vests and shipping them off to their family members, conduct exopectable suually from Third World nations.

Loving the military also got them stuck with vehicles more vulnerable to IEDs than those of otyher Coalition nations who had more robust vehicles -- perhaps valuing the lives of their troops more highly than did the Pentagon.

The other evident national weakness arising from that high degree of respect: politicians seeking to cut war funds so that troops would be pulled out of Iraq and returned to the presumably safer homeland, were criticised and silenced by the specious argument that cutting those funds would betray the service personnel. Underlying this argument, although not stated outright was the suggestion that the President was prepared to leave troops out there in harm's way whether or not there were funds to support them.

As to the issue of whether the US has the military it deserves ... it's now more than 10 years since the government settled on invading Afghanistan, and this year alone, we've had at least three changes in military understandings of what they're supposed to be doing there. Is there such a word as eptitude? Little of it seems in evidence in Afghanistan to this point. How lowly we would regard a similar situation involving a foreign army.

Comparing, as in this story, current assaults on the good names of Petraeus and McChrystal with those earlier in the decade about the good names of, for example, Rumsfeld and leading generals of the day, is footling, and one such instance suggested here seems false. I do not believe General Shinseki before retirement criticized his seniors publicly. He was one of several how said in later years he had been right in the central issue of sizing Iraqi invasion forces. General Newbold, also, spoke after retirement and was of course entitled to. Schake seems to be equating these and other like-thinking generals with, for example, Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post: infantile.

The current argument for getting generals of all stripes to shut up in public about possible future plans for the conduct of war is simple and obvious. It's never a good idea to tell foes your future military plans. One reason we're in our current pickle was that ten years ago the former commander in chief, Bush II, in a remarkable series of blowhard moments, told the world that the Yanks were coming to Afghanistan; al-Qaeda, like everybody else, paid attention; al-Qaeda packed up and left Afghanistan promptly; al-Qaeda, according to the CIA, General Petraeus and sundry other authorities is now richer, more widespread and more powerful than it was when the president was warning them.

Was this really in US interests? Couldn't anybody get junior office Bush of the Texas air national guard, a sort of a military man, to shut up?