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Death by Interview
My apologies for the radio silence, as I’ve taken a few days off and now find that I’m eager to get back on the road so I can dispense with these chores and get some rest. Keeping up with the General McChrystal situation as best I can, I have to wonder why in the world McChrystal allowed himself to get in this stew in the first place.
With rare exception, dumb people don’t become generals and someone with McChrystal’s background is certainly not dumb. Keep in mind that he had already been called on the carpet for publicly pressuring the Obama administration to stop the Hamlet routine and approve his troop level request. Additionally, it appears that the general was rather under-whelmed with the President and members of his national security team. Add to that the apparent fixed withdrawal schedule, and it may be that McChrystal found himself in an untenable position.
An outright resignation would send the administration’s Afghanistan policy into utter chaos, risking the mission and the troops. Now, I admit that I’m running on very little sleep here, but I have to wonder if this “Death By Interview” was just the thing to allow McChrystal to exit a situation be could no longer function in, yet still give the mission in Afghanistan its best possible shot at success?
He had to have known that this piece would be the death knell for his command. Was that the point of the exercise?
Published in General
While dumb people often become generals (the ones saying global warmificationess is a national security matter spring nimbly to mind), McChrystal is definitely not dumb, regardless of the usual hit pieces that come out when anyone is getting fired.
So it was deliberate. The general felt he could not work with the civilian authorities. With whom we’re stuck for a while. This is not heartening. I can’t remember even Dubya getting sent this many scolding letters from Congress re foreign policy. Gotta be a record.
I’ve always been astonished by what people will tell me if I just ask. Most people, even very shrewd, press-savvy ones, have such a deep need to talk about themselves and to feel understood that if you simply spend enough time with them and show genuine curiosity about them, they’ll end up saying way more than they intended to say. It often doesn’t sound so astonishing in the context of the conversation — over dinner, one-to-one — but when you get home and transcribe the interviews, you think, “I can’t believe he said that.” People like to talk about themselves; they like to complain about their bosses; they have an enormous need to justify themselves. Eric Dezenhall is exactly right about this. I’m no exception to this rule: I’ve made staggering mistakes dealing with the press because of my own vanity and eagerness to talk about myself.
As a general principle of political analysis, as I keep trying to persuade my Turkish friends, I would assume that genuine conspiracies are very rare, but that incompetence, bureaucracy, laziness, personal rivalries and vanity are ubiquitous and together explain almost all seemingly inexplicable political events.
I think GEN McChrystal’s problem is he believes his own press releases. I don’t think there was any ulterior motive behind this, just an enormous ego and a big mouth. Most of the senior officers I’ve met sincerely believe they can do no wrong. After all, they are told by their staff they are infallible. Anyone with a contrary opinion is not on their staff.
The general had a duty to express his doubts about policy concerning Afghanistan with his superiors…in private. He had a duty to lead, by word and deed, his subordinates in the lawful manner of respecting their superior officers/officials. He fail on both. If he found the burden of following his order too much to bear, he should have resigned. I think that he did what he did was cowardly and dishonorable. I also think I understand why he did it, after all, when you get to his level you believe you are infallible.
Spot-on, Claire. Anyone tempted to believe in conspiracy theories should simply think back to any group project they’ve had to do in school or at work. A small group of committed people — and often just one person — has to carry the whole load, while the others are nowhere to be found when there’s work to be done. The slackers engage in passive-aggressive behavior, often sabotaging the group’s efforts, while the leaders become increasingly exasperated as they spend more of their time wrangling non-contributors than getting actual work done. This frustration frequently spills over into public complaints about the group or the effort, which in the case of a “secret” conspiracy can shade over into betrayal of the entire enterprise.
The rare conspiracy does succeed by accident. Generally, though, people are just too … human … to make it work.
Incidentally, I think the above — absent the covert nature of a conspiracy — could also help explain Gen. McChrystal’s behavior. I’m generally one of the non-slackers on my group projects, and I can testify that after months or years of pushing on a string trying to get everyone on board and doing their job, the urge to publicly vent is nigh on irresistible.
What about sheer arrogance?