McChrystal Clear

According to the Rolling Stone magazine story, two things are McChrystal clear about the general who is attempting to win the fight in Afghanistan:

1. McChrystal voted for Obama, the community organizer, not for McCain, the Vietnam war hero,
   
2. McChrystal cannot get his own troops to buy into his counter-insurgency strategies. "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks," McChrystal tries to joke. "But it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."
   

Think about these two facts for a minute.

Certainly McCain was no one's idea of a good candidate, but Obama was clearly a complete disaster waiting to happen. How could a military man NOT see the problems associated with Obama? The fact that he voted for BHO is a stunning indictment of his poor judgement.

Combine this with the fact that he's pushing a strategy his own infantry can't be convinced to follow. That's a recipe for disaster. No matter how good the theory may look, if the grunts who are supposed to execute that theory don't buy into it, it isn't going to work, if only because those same grunts won't implement your glorious theory.

As any industry exec can tell you, if you can't even convince your own paid employees that you have a decent product, you won't convince the customers those employees are supposed to be selling to. McChrystal's COIN strategy is already dead - he just doesn't know it yet.

But let's look a little deeper.

Rolling Stone paints a picture of a man who has enormous problems with authority, enormous empathy for the "little guys" out on the front line, but wants those same "little guys" to stay the hell away from the border where all the bad guys are, a man who adamantly endorses the use of the latest technology to advance his agenda, a man who voted for the wimp, and has a winning plan that ivory tower types like, but the grunt hates.

Hmmmm..... who does this sound like?

Let's put it this way: if that thumbnail description had been used to outline an Obama cover story in Rolling Stone, would a word of it have to be changed?

Well, no...no.... it wouldn't.

McChrystal is a user of people who outmaneuvered his President into giving him exactly what he wanted, but then found he couldn't deliver what he promised.

Again, who does this sound like? Does getting George Bush to hand over the initial TARP funds sound somewhat familiar?

Sure, McChrystal is excellent at organizing the Special Forces community as it assassinates Al Quaeda bad guys. But essentially, he's just an authority-hating, teflon general whose good at organizing specific kinds of communities, much as Obama organized the 'hood.

He's single-handedly managed to collect all power into his hands in Afghanistan: "McChrystal 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. " It's almost like he's set up a commission of czars that run rings around the rest of the government.

McChrystal is said to have enormous disdain for civilians.
Obama is known to have enormous disdain for anyone who doesn't think like him.

It is no wonder McChrystal was saddened when the community organizer he voted for ignored him. Like called to like across the deep, but one of the "likes" didn't really like him.

Is there anything to be concerned about here?
I don't see why.
What we have here is a liberal idiot firing another liberal idiot.