My guess/prediction is that President Obama will retain General McChrystal as commander of US forces in Afghanistan. I wouldn’t wager a lot, but here’s the case for betting with me instead of against me:
Obama’s logic will be that, "We are knee-deep in the decisive year." Those are McChrystal’s words from the Hastings article.
Obama spent a great deal of time last year evaluating competing proposals about how to proceed in Afghanistan. In the end, he blessed the McChrystal/Clinton cluster over the objections of the Biden/Eikenberry group. Obama made the policy choice to give McChrystal latitude to pursue the General’s counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy for a specific period of time. Time’s not up.
Regardless of what we may think of Obama’s decision to surge in Afghanistan, he’s likely to want to see it through.
Despite the embarrassment of having a general and his staff publicly dishing on the civilian leadership, there’s no policy disagreement in play. That’s key. And that’s why it’s not a Truman vs. MacArthur moment.
The substantive matter is whether McChrystal directed "contemptuous words" toward his civilian leadership. In my reading of the article, he did not. It’s clear enough that he tolerated a derisive vibe among his staff, providing fodder for Hastings’ piece and the ensuing scandal. McChrystal’s violation of decorum was foolish enough (and reckless enough) to give Obama free play to fire him. But, compared to the stinking piles of crap our President gets every day from the GOP and its enablers in the right wing media, McChrystal’s words were tame indeed.
Moreover, Obama doesn’t strike me as particularly thin skinned, or as the type who feels the need to make a show after being dissed. Which is why I’ll make this tiny wager that he’ll choose to take the magnanimous high road. Better to quiet the name calling and get back to the far more serious business of war.
Obama probably considers himself too busy to rethink the whole Afghanistan project right now, especially after putting so much time into it last fall. Given that he has already chosen to run this race, he has to calculate an approach that keeps us moving toward the finish line. Keeping McChrystal and his team in place will probably seem far less risky than changing horses at such a critical moment.
I for one, hope Obama is smart enough to find a graceful way to turn down the volume of the media circus as quickly as he did with the Henry Gates/Cambridge police issue last year. Don’t expect to see him drinking beer with McChrystal. But offering some sympathy about the perils of dealing with an over-excitable gossip-dealing press might provide the ticket out.