Stanley McChrystal to Replace David McKiernan as Top Commander in Afghanistan
I don’t have any special insight into today’s command shake-up in Afghanistan, but I like it. It seems to me that if you have a new administration implementing a new strategy in an ongoing war, that it makes perfect sense that a new person would be brought it to implement it. General McChrystal’s area of specialty is apparently in special operations and he’s well-versed in counterinsurgency; that all seems very appropriate given the strategy the administration’s outlined for Afghanistan.
Interestingly, according to Spencer Ackerman there wasn’t really any huge trouble with General McKiernan: “I’ve heard grumblings about McKiernan being slow to adapt to the complexities of the Afghanistan war, but nothing that you’d hang your hat on, or rise to the level of outright dissatisfaction.”
One way to read that is that there must be some hidden problem. But optimistically, I think it’s just evidence of good decision-making. If McKiernan wasn’t the best man for the job, then replacing him with someone who Robert Gates and David Petraeus believed would do a better job is the right call. There’s no reason to have waited around with a non-optimal commander in place merely because he hadn’t done anything egregious.
22 Responses to “Stanley McChrystal to Replace David McKiernan as Top Commander in Afghanistan”
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May 11th, 2009 at 3:38 pm
Hey, maybe a Specials Ops guy will find a way to win battles that doesn’t involve blowing up a lot of buildings full of civilians!
Okay, that was the easy one . . .
May 11th, 2009 at 4:53 pm
I wonder how many times the Russians changed the commanding officer leading their war with Afghanistan? How’d that turn out..?…?…
May 11th, 2009 at 5:14 pm
As a commenter on the Times article said, the timing of this may be connected to the catastrophic air strike the other day. If McKiernan was going to be replaced anyway, why not throw Karzai a political bone?
May 11th, 2009 at 6:07 pm
Now if we could only come up with a reason to be there.
Osama is elsewhere or dead. The Karzai government steals all the aid.
What is the objective?
May 11th, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Would most Washington Pundits be able to recognize a “non-optimal commander” even if he shot them in the genitalia?
Come to think of it, would most Washington Pundits have been able to even correctly NAME the current commander in Afghanistan in a pop quiz?
May 11th, 2009 at 6:39 pm
This appears to be one of those McJobs we hear so much about.
May 11th, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Perhaps other commanders had a say in this, too. NATO not happy.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Well, it’s not exactly Truman sacking MacArther or Lincoln sacking McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, Burnside Hooker, and Meade (sort of), but it’s a start.
May 11th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Oops. Missed a comma. There was no general named Burnside Hooker. It is cool name though.
Ambrose “sideburns” Burnside and Joseph “camp followers” Hooker were two separate but equally inept commanders of the Army of the Potomac.
May 11th, 2009 at 8:50 pm
Glad to see Obama officially take ownership of the war in Afghanistan.
Eventually, Bush will be blamed for something I guess.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:01 pm
Let’s see, how did McChrystal do in Somalia and in the Pat Tillman fiasco? Is Obama looking for a scapegoat? Oops, this isn’t about climate, what do I know about Afghanistan?
H/t narciso
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May 11th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
Well, it’s not exactly Truman sacking MacArther or Lincoln sacking McDowell, McClellan, Pope, McClellan again, Burnside Hooker, and Meade (sort of), but it’s a start.
More along the lines of Eisenhower sacking Fedenhall, Dawley, Landrum, Lucas, Allen . . . and about 20 other guys who might have been okay if things had been a little different, but just were not right for this job at this time.
Let’s see, how did McChrystal do in Somalia and in the Pat Tillman fiasco? Is Obama looking for a scapegoat? Oops, this isn’t about climate, what do I know about Afghanistan?
Very little, most likely. We should have had a special forces expert in this particular job five years ago.
McChrystal got picked after all the pols and cranks got pushed aside and the rational players got a chance to pick a leader. Let’s see what he can do.
May 11th, 2009 at 9:51 pm
Midland, 12. Heh, you should know better than to wander into my little booby traps. I’ve been there more often than you have; I can assert that with even more confidence than you asserted that I don’t know much about Afghanistan. But, in fact, I know little about McChrystal and how he will fit into the situation over there. I agree with your sentiment. Let’s see what he can do.
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May 11th, 2009 at 10:05 pm
If I were more cynical, I would say this new guy is a “well the new guy just got here so the policy can’t be working yet” kind of guy. But time will tell. Let’s talk in 1 F.U.
May 11th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Midland:
So you don’t have questions about McChrystal’s handling of the Tillman fiasco? Or what he knew about torture?
May 12th, 2009 at 4:31 am
This is shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Typical of the way Obama is handling his foreign policy.
I told you clowns this idiot has no fucking clue about foreign policy or military operations and he’s demonstrating it more and more every day.
May 12th, 2009 at 6:36 am
It may be that the high death toll of civilians in that air attack in West Aghanistan last week was the straw.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:06 am
According to some speculation inside the Beltway, this replacement was the idea of General Petraeus. The Bush folks thought that Petraeus was the cats’ meow and, apparently, the Obama folks are of the same opinion.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:24 am
Midland:
So you don’t have questions about McChrystal’s handling of the Tillman fiasco? Or what he knew about torture?
I believe that every general who has served in the US military between Washington and Kabul over the last 8 years is complicit in some cover-up for one or the other of Cheney’s criminal conspiracies. However, it takes twenty years to train a general and even then really good ones are rare. If Gates thinks this guy can dig us out of the hole we are in in Afghanistan, I’m interested.
May 12th, 2009 at 7:51 am
Re General Stanley McChrystal
This fellow may be implicated in some of the torture scandals currently swirling around the Bush Administration.
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/05/stanley-mcchrystal-a-history-of-torture.html#more
May 12th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
That guy looks like a cross between Hoover and Niedermeyer.
May 12th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
That guy looks like a cross between Hoover and Niedermeyer.
That’s not an uncommon look for US Army generals. Leading man good looks are rare. They tend toward various varieties of bland and earnest, with an occasional dollop of whack.