Secretary of Defense Gates is the responsible official charged with managing the Pentagon. His portfolio certainly includes managing personnel and removing any one whose actions circumvent military codes of conduct and undermine the chain of command. The Rolling Stone story is a case study in fractured military discipline.
Accordingly, Gates must immediately demand that General McChrystal identify and dismiss his aides whose statements to the RS reporter were insubordinate at best and, in truth, borderline treasonous. Then Gates should force McChrystal to resign.
The argument about changing horses midstream is farcical. If the military is so weak and the AfPak war strategy so fragile that it relies on one particular general to be carried out effectively, we should bring home the troops starting tomorrow and close down the Pentagon because all is lost.
Unless McChrystal is monumentally stupid it seems impossible when he spoke to the RS reporter and heard his subordinates express disdain for their civilian superiors he didn't anticipate the reaction the story has brought about.
The only logical explanation is McChrystal has determined he cannot succeed with the strategy he promised Obama would work. The General is still pissed that Obama refused to go with the "Long War" plan favored by war hawks in the Pentagon and among the neocons. He wants out and he has committed the equivalent of career suicide with malice aforethought.
Remember how McChrystal positioned himself since he got his current command.
Within weeks of taking office, Obama instructed the Pentagon to intensify the fight against Al Qaeda and he authorized 21,000 additional troops to be deployed to Afghanistan to support the efforts of McChrystal, the commander in the field.
Obama's bold, decisive and unexpected move didn't satisfy the “Long War” advocates, including McChrystal, who favored leaving large numbers of troops in Iraq and moving larger numbers into Afghanistan. Bottom line, they didn’t trust a politician who opposed the Iraq invasion to keep the war on terror front and centre.
In mid-summer 2009, a few months after the President approved the new troop deployments, he was briefed by Pentagon officials, who described how the Taliban had regained the initiative in Afghanistan. They also revealed that McChrystal had not implemented elements of agreed upon battle orders. An angry Commander-in Chief ordered Gates to have McChrystal prepare a new comprehensive war plan to be subjected to a top-to-bottom review.
McChrystal and the Pentagon war planners drafted a strategy that envisioned a massive increase in troops to be in place for an undetermined time period at enormous cost with an uncertain outcome. Pentagon sources - most likely encouraged by McChrystal - leaked the draft plan to the press. McChrystal also went public trying to box in Obama.
According to credible reports, war hawks in the Pentagon went so far as to threaten Obama, that if he didn’t give in to McChrystal, top generals would resign and publicly attack him for abandoning a "winnable" war. Then, Republican Congressional leaders began a public effort to force the President’s hand. In this toxic atmosphere, Obama began his strategic review process.
The President didn't cave into the war hawks' pressure. His final strategy sent close to the number of troops McChrystal had called for, but established a defined time period for its successful execution. Obama asked Gates, Joint Chiefs of Staff head Mullen, Generals Petraeus and McChrystal to tell him if it was viable and they agreed it was.
Not surprisingly, even before the strategy was announced sources in the Pentagon began to try to walk it back with help from John McCain among others.
Now the promises McChrystal made, probably with his fingers crossed, are suspect and the strategy he designed seems to be failing.
Being the moral coward he revealed himself to be during his handling of the Pentagon's heinous cover up of the Pat Tilman killing, McChrystal is now maneuvering to get out of the cross-hairs and out of the military.
If the war comes to an inglorious end, he will certainly becomes a senior military commentator on FOX, leading the attacks claiming that once again the Democrats - this time in the person of Obama - lost a "winnable war" and hastened the demise of U.S. power and prestige. It worked after Nixon lost the Vietnam War and it could work again.
This sad tale has many chapters to be written. It is difficult to imagine any kind of happy ending.