Poor General McChrystal! With his bosses General David Petraeus and Admiral Mike Mullen as well as Defense secretary Gates justifying Pakistan’s ‘terrorist connections’, Mullah Mohammed Omar’s QST trail from Quetta to Kandahar is operating unimpeded.

McChrystal himself had warned about Pakistan’s sheltering of Taliban terrorists in his August 2009 report to Obama: Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.

But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002! That shows Obama’s continuance of Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sought to justify Pakistan’s terrorist connections, alluding to a “deficit of trust” between Washington, DC and Islamabad. Mr Gates also said there was “some justification” for Pakistan's concerns about past American policies. Gen David Patraeus, rushed in with an apologia for his Pakistani friends, by claiming that while Faisal was inspired by militants in Pakistan, he did not necessarily have contacts with the militants. Both Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Patraeus fancy themselves to be “soldier statesmen” a la Gen Dwight Eisenhower. Adm Mullen has visited Pakistan 15 times and Gen Patraeus no less frequently. Both evidently have high opinions of their abilities to persuade Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to crack down on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they cannot prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

With McChrystal’s hands tied by his bosses and Pakistani ISI financing Afghan Taliban insurgency from US financial aid as narrated by Matt Waldman on 6/13/2010 in a report titled 'The sun in the sky' published by London School Of Economics, US military’s Kandahar operation and Afghan mission is headed for failure.

That's the way it looks to me as well.

I certainly hope that, if Gen. McChrystal does end up being dismissed, several members of his staff are as well. They are the ones granted anonymity in the Rolling Stone story. I have been skeptical of McChrystal's command for other reasons, but if he has subordinates with time enough on their hands to score points for their boss on background -- not even good points, at that -- maybe it's time to set him down.

As far as the Obama administration is concerned, its fault here and in its foreign policy generally has little to do with the President's own thin skin. The problem is instead that there are just too many cooks in the kitchen. Some of them are very smart cooks; every one of them gets his or her shot at every stage of the meal from prepping the vegetables to clearing the table. Decisions eventually get made for reasons, which is a big improvement on the last administration. Then, decisions were made with the reasons being worked out, or not, long afterward.

But mere improvement on the disastrous performance of his predecessor is not going to cut it for this President. The Rolling Stone article certainly wasn't wrong about the contrast between unity of command on the military side of the Afghan conflct and its complete absence among the civilians. Gen. McChrystal, for whatever reason, seems to have allowed a poor command climate to grow around him, but the one in Obama's administration is not that great either.

Peter,

You question the reporter's intentions but do you really believe Gen McChrystal was snookered? Rolling Stone is saying he saw the piece and had no objections. Maybe more details will come out in his meeting with the President tomorrow, but as a field grade officer, I find it hard to believe McChrystal did not understand the ruckus this would cause. Even if his PA officer or exec was the one who signed off the story in his name, I can't believe a competent aide wouldn't immediately notify him the story was skewed or reflected poorly on him. On one hand, if he didn't expect it to turn out this way, it was a serious misjudgment. But I don't think you can rule out that just maybe, he went into this with an agenda. He has said eyebrow raising things before, although these remarks are much worse. Look at it this way--he forced the nat'l security staff to review its Afghan strategy before. This will most likely provoke another review.

Well written post. As commented "The second story is Hastings's rather tendentious reporting on what McChrystal's enemies and critics say against him -- their complaints, and their doubts about the war. While assessing reporter's motivations is world sport news today always a dodgy business, I suspect that this is the story Hastings pitched to his editor. The whole thing has the feel of a hungry guy hoping to hunt a big trophy kill: taking down a four-star hero and showing that his war plan (note how Hastings describes the strategy as McChrystal's, not the president's) is fatally flawed and doomed to failure."

Peter,

As usual, you are more perceptive and more charitable than I was when I read the Rolling Stone piece. I believe you're correct about the evolution of the story and the reporter's motives.

The "command climate" portrayed in the story, and the associated backbiting among Obama's advisers is worrisome enough. However, what bothers me most about the affair is GEN McChrystal's apparent lack of situational awareness. Even I would know better than to give any reporter, much less one from Rolling Stone, this much access. If this is an indication of how easy it is to ambush him and his staff, the sooner they are gone from theater the better.

an accurate and detached view of things - but 'sad' this is not - this is a good thing and in many ways inevitable: Obama's foreign policy [and his presidency in general] is a mess and this episode nicely pulls back the curtain on the fact. Reality is we weren't gonna succeed in Afghanistan anyway, not with this administration managing a dubious strategy in accordance with an extremely foolish 'deadline' - and regardless of that, a good case can be made that McChrystal wasn't the right man for job to begin with - so this is a good thing because the truth is now out there for all to see: Afghanistan is a deadly serious puzzle that will continue to confound and resist easy explication; and that when Obama embraced this war during the primaries he very clearly revealed two things about himself, namely that he's a shameless political opportunist who is desperately ignorant and in over his head when it comes to foreign policy and war.

I did a thought experiment, to imagine what role McChrystal would have had in life if he'd been born at the end of the nineteenth century in Germany. It is easy to imagine him running an SS unit or an Einsatzgruppen squad, with the same taste for extra-legal killing on which he's built his US Army career. No wonder he feels invulnerable after acting as judge, jury, and executioner in an unknown thousands of cases, with no accountability.

He should have been court marshaled along with everyone else complicit in the cover up of Pat Tillman's death. It showed a lack of leadership, courage and honor and it was only a matter of time until such a belligerent coward was brought down by his own conceit and swagger.

General who is known in miltiary circle as disciplined leader spoke against his selectors who send him there a year ago with some military strategy.He was sure that Pakistan are gathering Taliban within her premises.He just finished his helmand operation and planing for next serious combat in Kandahar.In between he seriously mocked on his civilian leadership and it really worth to ponder that on what circumstances he felt like that which he expressed in his intervview during latest operation in Helmand that made him to say like that.
No doubt it is embarrassing situation for obama govt , another crack in his security plans and surely it would sooner be felt in army circles deputed in Afghanistan who was under command of general for last one year.
However his statement would act as booster shot for scattered taliabans in Afghanistan and forces backing talibans in Pakistan.
It is also best time for antiwar forces to pressurizes US and allies to halt its operation as soon as possible as violence in civilian set up is again touching its peak after newly combat mission.

We are 9 years into this fiasco, al Qaeda's leaders have been the houseguests of the Pakistani ISI since 2002, the Taliban are proving to be as resistant to US military efforts as the Viet Cong were a generation earlier, and now we have another General who is trying to wring victory from a no-win situation. It's deja vu all over again!

Obama made a major error, perhaps because he is a poor student of history, in making a more vigorous AfPak military campaign a centerpiece of his campaign for office. Then he compounded it by ignoring advice from several of his advisors that this was occupation was already a quagmire. He admitted he though Iraq was a mistake (it was), but hoped to make his bonafides as a prospective commander and chief by plugging the war in Afghanistan. The fact is, the war was essentially an exercise in futility before he got to the White House. When Osama bin Laden and his gang went over to Pakistan's NW frontier region with Mullah Omar, the game was up in Afghanistan - all that was left were the still-dangerous remnants of the Taliban, who are still seen by the Pashtuns as the best chance to reunite their ethnic group and make over Afghanistan in the image of the 13th Century state they most desire. And a US puppet government that nobody really likes, including us.

McCrystal will one day thank his stars that he was able to get out while he could. So, we need political leaders who not only understand their responsibilities as Commander in Chief, but also their obligation to carefully evaluate where and when the interests of our people are genuinely at stake. Neither Iraq not Afghanistan qualified as a necessary war in this context (and neither does Iran). We've had enough wasteage of lives and treasure while our leaders have tried to prove they are real tough guys.

Deconstructing the Rolling Stone article may provide some comfort to Dr Feaver but it is little more than an exercise born of a particular educational enthusiasm, which, judging by his biographical details, I imagine he endured. Yes, three threads may be found in the piece but so may a dozen others. The three are woven together to make a piece, yes, just as they are woven together in McChrystal himself.

Some journalists have hypothesised that the general was acting deliberately in agreeing to give Rolling Stone such access, that he wilfully sought the consequent outcome for some quasi-political purpose. Others see it as either blind hubris or stupidity.

What may be a closer truth is that the US adventure in Afghanistan is inherently doomed and its elements, in consequence, cannot but cumulatively contribute to its failure. Put another way, Can one pursue a doomed purpose in successful stages? Well, yes, the troops can act successfully, also the supply lines and much of what happens day to day. But even these must ultimately be attached to the overall purpose since they are links, however small, to its achievement and that, by definition, is not attainable. If one stands far enough back from the whole Afghan thing one cannot fail to see that the objectives defined by Obama cannot be achieved. Quite apart from anything else, Al Qaeda is no longer even in Afghanistan.

The journey from the point when Obama adopted military advice and set his policy in motion to the moment when the objectives will be recognised as unattainable is progressive. Processes that are progressive start here, end there and are marked by various events like musical notation. An over enthusiastic admirer once said to a renowned composer (maybe Debussy): I cannot imagine how you manage to write so many notes. Madam, he replied, music is not the notes, it is the spaces in between. This entire Afghan undertaking is such a time/space progression between one moment of decision and its failure, and McChrystal is but one of the notes along the way.

Feaver lance bahavior god days command if correct as probably it was few things worse than a general

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But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002! That shows Obama’s continuance of Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates sought to justify Pakistan’s terrorist connections, alluding to a “deficit of trust” between Washington, DC and Islamabad. Mr Gates also said there was “some justification” for Pakistan's concerns about past American policies. Gen David Patraeus, rushed in with an apologia for his Pakistani friends, by claiming that while Faisal was inspired by militants in Pakistan, he did not necessarily have contacts with the militants. Both Adm Mike Mullen and Gen Patraeus fancy themselves to be “soldier statesmen” a la Gen Dwight Eisenhower. Adm Mullen has visited Pakistan 15 times and Gen Patraeus no less frequently. Both evidently have high opinions of their abilities to persuade Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani to crack down on the Haqqani network in North Waziristan and the Taliban’s Mullah Omar-led Quetta Shura.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they cannot prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

With McChrystal’s hands tied by his bosses and Pakistani ISI financing Afghan Taliban insurgency from US financial aid as narrated by Matt Waldman on 6/13/2010 in replica TAG a report titled 'The sun in the sky' published by London School Of Economics, US military’s Kandahar operation and Afghan mission is headed for failure.