GW Discourse

There are some things that are kind of expected not to happen if you’re a general in the U.S. Armed Forces. One of them is to have Rolling Stone get an all-access profile where you badmouth all of your civilian superiors and colleagues — including the Commander in Chief. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, commanding general of NATO forces in Afghanistan, did just that. President Obama has summoned him to Washington, where hopefully McChrystal will be relieved of duty.

The instant analogy is during the Korean War, with Gen. Douglas MacArthur leading the UN force to defend South Korea. MacArthur publicly criticized President Harry Truman’s handling of the war effort throughout 1950 and early 1951. Then in March 1951, MacArthur undercut Truman’s efforts at negotiation with China by issuing his own ultimatum for Chinese surrender. Truman fired MacArthur two weeks later, after receiving a unanimous recommendation from the Joint Chiefs of Staff and his civilian advisors.

McChrystal has not flouted presidential authority quite the way MacArthur did, but he already came fairly close last September when he wrote to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates of his recommendations on American strategy in Afghanistan — and then released the report to the public. Generals do not make policy; they advise, sure, and they execute the policy, but they do not shape the political atmosphere for the president. That incident alone would have been enough to reassign the General, but the Rolling Stone piece shows a disrespect for the proper order of command that is unfitting of a general and embarrassing to the President.

History has largely vindicated Truman. He said toward the end of his life, “I fired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’t fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail.” McChrystal has not respected the authority of the president, and that’s grounds for removal.