Let's talk war.

[hackthis_archive]

For those of you not living in the USA or just too far gone in your World Cup haze a few days ago Rolling Stone magazine posted an article they will be publishing in their upcoming issue about Gen Stanley McChrystal. McChrystal, for those who don't know, is the man in charge of US military operations in Afghanistan.

The article, The Runaway General, was written by Michael Hastings, a reporter who embedded with McChrystal's team (Team America, no really, that's what they call themselves) for a month.

Now I know this sounds mighty familiar to Generation Kill people, or anybody who watches the nightly news, but something a little different occurred when this article was published.

Probably because this article took a rather different slant.

There is a fabulous line in the GK mini-series where Ray talks about being misunderstood by the liberal anti-war faction, or as he puts it: Dear Frederick, thank you for your nice letter, but I am actually a US marine who was born to kill. Clearly you have mistaken me for some wine sipping communist dick suck and although peace probably appeals to tree loving bisexuals like you and your parents, I happen to be a death dealing, blood crazed warrior who wakes up every day just hoping for the chance to dismember my enemies and defile their civilization. Peace sucks a hairy asshole. War is the motherfucking answer..

This is a bit extreme, but it goes to point about the potential difference in mind set between people who spend their lives protecting their country and someone who would be considered "a wine-sipping communist dick suck" who is most vocally against this war.

But let's be straight. Reporters are not required to be impartial. They are not required to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. They can say whatever they want as long as they've got the quotes to back them up. And Mr. Hastings did.

So when this article came out where McChrystal and Team America were reported to openly disagree and have derisory feelings toward his superiors, the people he runs OEF (Operation Enduring Freedom) with, to be unable to muster support in his troops and perhaps have gotten away with things other people wouldn't get away with. Well. Things got real ugly.

Andrew Exum is smart. Repeatedly.

Nate Fick and Tom Ricks discuss the situation.

The LA Times breaks it down.

And all of this lead to a meeting with the White House. You can guess how that went down.

Stars and Stripes has a round up, of like, everything.



I've been following and discussing this clusterfuck with people pretty much since the story broke. I read the RS article a few days ago and was actually going to make a rather large post about it, but then that got into COIN and the troops and I just decided to save myself from further aggravation. My issues with the article are manifold for both better and worse.

1. It's clear that Hastings thinks COIN is a crock of shit and he's entitled to that, but at no time does he offer a better alternative. The tenor of his article was so full of disdain that for me a lot of reasonable points are being ignored because all anybody's talking about is McChrystal. The man ignored a BBM message; wow, bad behavior. So, let's be honest...

2. McChrystal's great sin was insubordination. Even if you don't agree with it, you toe the fucking line. You don't go around bad mouthing the entire administration whether you do it or your people do it as proxy. Like Nate pointed out, you are responsible for your men. You are responsible for keeping people in line. Hell, based on Article 88 (Thanks M!) he's lucky he didn't get court-martialed.

It really is like Tom quoted yesterday, "Different spanks for different ranks."

3. McChrystal's aids. Hastings was embedded for a month and all his quotes are derisory. He could have used positive quotes, but that wasn't the slant he wanted to take. That's his prerogative, but at no time is anyone quoted as having anything useful say. Does nobody there have something thoughtful to say*? At one point I told M I thought perhaps Ray was working for Team America. ("Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay.")

*Team America consists of, and I quote, "The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. 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. Do you really expect me to believe not one person there had something thoughtful and incisive to say? Stop blowing smoke up my ass you're giving me gas.

4. I want to say I'm amazed at the access the reporter was given, but we've seen time and again (and I've read several books time again) that this is the new military. They welcome the press. They want civilians to know what's going on, to be informed. I wonder how this policy is going to change now based on what is pretty much the equivalent of an IED.

5. What really caused me to stroke out was page 5 where McChrystal goes to visit the troops and it's clear they are not buying what he's selling. These are your men. If you have to get down on your fucking knees to sell this, then you do it, because that is your job, to make them feel like what they are doing is important, that it matters. But no. He doesn't do it, and no story I've read has addressed this, because once again, the troops don't seem to matter and that shit pisses me off.

6. To me, this article could have explored some quality points about McChrystal's relationship with Karzai (dodgy); about COIN and all it's failings or successes (if those even exist); about how people are stuck on an antiquated concept of being able to "win" this war, or hell any war (not gonna happen); about what the people on the ground need to keep doing their jobs (a little fucking support would be nice), but because the whole thing is overshadowed by some seriously poor judgment (let's drink with the liberal dick suck reporter, who came to camp in a blue blazer and oxford - page 2, and talk as though he's not around) and a reporter with his own agenda (is there anybody you didn't throw under the Humvee besides Sec. Clinton) nobody will ever address these matters. And to me, that's the real loss in all this mess.


Thanks to alethialia for inspiring me to actually get this down on print anyway and for providing the RS and NPR links so I didn't have to go digging through my email. Thanks to maurheti for being my sounding board in all things military related and thanks to serialkarma for being all, "Hey, your boy Nate is on my NPR."

Comments

[romanticalgirl.livejournal.com]

The office I work with contains several liberals, a few conservatives and a social anarchist, so this was quite the discussion yesterday. I think I hit a lot of these points and got across to them the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" doesn't just apply to schedulers of womens' OB/gyn appointments, but to the POTUS. The thing that floors me is that McChrystal had PRIOR DOCUMENTATION of what a embedded reporter could do power-wise with Generation Kill, and he's at a higher level of command.

As my military father put it - "You chose this job and you do your fucking job. You don't bitch about it to anyone but the people who can change it and even then you don't bitch - you sell something better."

McChrystal is the scapegoat, the easy item to talk about rather than the stuff that truly needs to be addressed. People are dying for this. The military is sold on the "do it for your country" which means their tenet is that they're dying for us. If the top command can't fucking sell that, then something else of greater import is really really wrong.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

I won't assume that McChrystal has read Generation Kill. It'd be nice if someone on Team America had read it, but I won't give anybody that much credit. What I will say is common sense would tell you that a journalist is not bound by the same code of conduct as a member of the US military, spoken or unspoken. To brazenly shoot your mouth off to someone who has no interest in covering your ass, whether it's at a meeting, in a Victor or lying on the bathroom floor of an Irish pub puking your guts out, that's stupid. So you get zero points for stupid. HOWEVER. You get minus points for as your daddy said, not doing your fucking job. I don't think McChrystal is a scapegoat I think he is a symptom of much MUCH bigger problems in the military, with these operations, with the administration and with the way the government operates as a whole, but you don't want me expounding for the next thirty minutes, trust. I think that McChrystal is a fucking distraction from the real issues though, chiefly for me, the fact that even the people on the ground aren't buying the moto shit and that they have doubts. And that upsets me.

[romanticalgirl.livejournal.com]

Distraction is a much better word than scapegoat and more along the lines of what I meant. As for GK - even if they hadn't read it, they had to have *heard* of it, though inter-service politics might make it so that they don't talk about those other things like the Navy and Marines and such.

Either way, if you don't know that Rolling Stone is a liberal leaning magazine and thus probably not in support of what your war is and is about, how did you manage to grow up in the United States? Also as a magazine article, they don't have the "news" requirement of being impartial (not that they are, but they're *supposed* to be), so they went into this with their eyes open.

[hackthis.livejournal.com]

Someone will come back and blame this entire thing on the military's open door policy to the media. It hasn't happened yet, but give it a few days and that's going to affect reporting from here on out. And that will be a real shame, because for every Hastings there is a Sebastian Junger and an Evan Wright just trying to present the situation in an informed light. But this is going to shut so many doors that could've been opened that it's actually a fucking travesty.