General Stanley Mc. Chrystal: The Runaway General by Michael Hastings'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner? It's a Thursday night in mid- April, and the commander of all U. S. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies – to keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since Mc. Chrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Gobierno del Estado de Puebla. Gobierno del Estado de Puebla. This Web site is temporarily unavailable while we perform required maintenance. We're working hard to improve your online experience and apologize for the inconvenience. Please check back soon! Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,5. Mc. Chrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 4. Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him. Mc. Chrystal turns sharply in his chair. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e- mail communications. This site is maintained for the Illinois General Assembly by the Legislative Information System, 705 Stratton Building, Springfield, Illinois 62706 217-782-3944 217-782-2050 (TTY). Visit ESPN to get up-to-the-minute sports news coverage, scores, highlights and commentary for NFL, MLB, NBA, College Football, NCAA Basketball and more. Si su consulta es sobre un tr.Dressed in off- the- rack civilian casual – blue tie, button- down shirt, dress slacks – Mc. Chrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the . Besides, the public eye has never been a place where Mc. Chrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops. The city has been rocked by two massive car bombs in the past day alone, calling into question the general's assurances that he can wrest it from the Taliban. At 5. 5, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate- blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you've fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice. Plus: an exclusive look at the war crime photos censored by the Pentagon. The next morning, Mc. Chrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the . The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although Mc. Chrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question- and- answer session following a speech he gave in London, Mc. Chrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as . The message to Mc. Chrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile. The Taibblog: Your Dose of Political Muckraking from Matt Taibbi. Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, Mc. Chrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one- liner. Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David Mc. Kiernan – then the U. S. It was the first time a top general had been relieved from duty during wartime in more than 5. Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas Mac. Arthur at the height of the Korean War. The Spill, the Scandal and the President: How Obama Let BP Get Away with Murder. Even though he had voted for Obama, Mc. Chrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, Mc. Chrystal thought Obama looked . Their first one- on- one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after Mc. Chrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military's preference for high- tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. David Petraeus beta- tested the theory during his . All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it. BP's Next Disaster: The Obama Administration Isn't Stopping the Oil Giant's Plans to Drill in the Arctic This Fall. As Mc. Chrystal leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, he did it with the same fearlessness he used to track down terrorists in Iraq: Figure out how your enemy operates, be faster and more ruthless than everybody else, then take the fuckers out. After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now- infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn't send another 4. U. S. Mc. Chrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president's ass. Last fall, with his top general calling for more troops, Obama launched a three- month review to re- evaluate the strategy in Afghanistan. On December 1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade- long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words . The president had thrown his weight, however hesitantly, behind the counterinsurgency crowd. Today, as Mc. Chrystal 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. 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. 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 Mc. Chrystal himself to refer to it as a . 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. Even those who support Mc. Chrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for Mc. Chrystal. His wife, Annie, has joined him for a rare visit: Since the Iraq War began in 2. Though it is his and Annie's 3. Mc. Chrystal has invited his inner circle along for dinner and drinks at the . His wife isn't surprised. There's a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park- esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can- do attitude and their disdain for authority. After arriving in Kabul last summer, Team America set about changing the culture of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO- led mission is known. He also set a manic pace for his staff, becoming legendary for sleeping four hours a night, running seven miles each morning, and eating one meal a day. By midnight at Kitty O'Shea's, much of Team America is completely shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while Mc. Chrystal's top advisers lock arms and sing a slurred song of their own invention. And they'd die for me. While Mc. Chrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U. S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 4. John Kerry to John Mc. Cain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed Mc. Chrystal's team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team Mc. Chrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama's top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four- star general and veteran of the Cold War, a . Frankly, it's not very helpful. He's a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can't just have someone yanking on shit. According to those close to the two men, Eikenberry – a retired three- star general who served in Afghanistan in 2. He's also furious that Mc. Chrystal, backed by NATO's allies, refused to put Eikenberry in the pivotal role of viceroy in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill – a move that effectively increased Mc. Chrystal's influence over diplomacy by shutting out a powerful rival.
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