Just wanted to add a few more thoughts to my earlier blog on General McChrystal before I head out for my daily tasks. Stratfor put out an excellent article on the situation but I disagree with some of the points made. In the article, Stratfor indicated the Rolling Stone article portrayed “McChrystal and his inner circle as basing their view of Washington personalities on whatever resources they can get out of those personalities. It is as if the new American strategy is a stroke of genius from U.S. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus on down, and that managing allies and navigating the bureaucracy in Washington is nothing more than a nuisance and distraction.”
I did not get that impression when I read the Rolling Stone article. Most of the comments from the general and his staff apparently came during down time in Paris while they waited for the Iceland volcano situation to clear up so they could return to Afghanistan. At one point the article author, Michael Hastings, recalls some of the antics of the group late at night at an Irish Pub in Paris. Hastings says many of the staff were “shitfaced”.
The stress involved in conducting and participating in a war is unimaginable to most. It is not uncommon for military personnel during down time to vent about job frustrations, bad mouth the “bosses” and resort to dark humor to relieve the stress. In most instances, it does not mean the people making the comments are disloyal or insubordinate…simply frustrated. While in the military I was assigned to several commands that gave an outlet for this behavior. Junior Officers were tasked with putting on Saturday Night Live type skits that were performed during official command functions. The officers were given free reign. The only time I can recall this nearly backfiring was an instance when one of the young officers had a little too much to drink before the performance and kept yelling that one of the female officers was fat and “had a big butt”. Some of the wives present considered his comments anti-female and were so incensed that a few threatened to jump on the stage and slap him. The poor guy was never again invited to anyone’s house for dinner.
The mistake the General and his staff made was resorting to that behavior in the presence of an outsider who might misinterpret some of the actions and statements. Were the comments inappropriate? Of course, but when taken into context it’s certainly easier to understand where they were coming from. The bottom line is the Commanding Officer can never make inappropriate comments about the chain of command in the presence of subordinates; that’s part of the burden of command.
As to the “nuisance and distraction” comment. The organizational politics you have to navigate in dealing with both the Washington DC and the military bureaucracy is a nuisance and distraction but the reality is you have to learn how to effectively master the various mine fields in order to do your job. Making the task even more difficult is the fact that since the draft ended many of the key civilian leaders have never served in the military. That means you have to take more time explaining things. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be done only that it adds more time to an often 7 day a week 24 hour a day job.
The Stratfor article also criticizes the Central Command leadership stating “the senior leadership in Afghanistan and CENTCOM appears to view the campaign as a self-evidently urgent fight and the American priority of the day. Such a view leaves the Afghan campaign unconnected to the broader strategic interests of the United States. It paints a picture of a leader who does not view his command and its challenges as a piece of the problem but as the whole of the problem.” I think the author is the article is mistaking the focus needed for the on scene commander to succeed at the job for ego. Typically a military commander focuses on the task at hand. It’s not that he or she is unaware that there are other national security problems; simply other commands are working those issues so its not necessary to give them more thought or focus.
Demoting General Petraeus from the Central Command head to take over Afghanistan is an unusual one but is a seamless transition. Gotta go. As always, my views are my own. I’ll probably blog more about this but will conclude with a quote from a May Speech General Petraeus gave in May called The Surge of Ideas: COINdinistas and Change in the US Army in 2006”:
“there are four steps to institutional change. First, you have to get the big ideas right – you have to determine the right overarching concepts and intellectual underpinnings. Second, you have to communicate the big ideas effectively throughout the breadth and depth of the organization. Third, you have to oversee implementation of the big ideas – in this case, first at our combat training centers and then in actual operations. And fourth, and finally, you have to capture lessons from implementation of the big ideas, so that you can refine the overarching concepts and repeat the overall process.”
