And here's a passage, useful in simply illuminating the fact that the adolescent usage of "that's so gay" has filtered up to the U.S. military:posted by ericb at 8:13 AM on June 22, 2010McChrystal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate-blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you’ve fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice.
“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says.
He pauses a beat.
“Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it.”
With that, he’s out the door.
“Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides.
“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”
Rolling Stone’s executive editor on Tuesday said that Gen. Stanley McChrystal did not raise any objections to a new article that repeatedly quotes him criticizing the administration.posted by ericb at 8:17 AM on June 22, 2010
Eric Bates, the magazine’s editor, said during an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that McChrystal was informed of the quotes prior to its publication as part of Rolling Stone's standard fact-checking process — and that the general did not object to or dispute any of the reporting.
Asked if McChrystal pushed back on the story, Bates responded: “No, absolutely not.”
“We ran everything by them in the fact-checking process as we always do,” the Rolling Stone editor said. “They had a sense of what was coming and it was all on the record and they spent a lot of time with our reporter, so I think they knew that they had said it.”
"The opinions he expresses are not surprising to those of us who have covered this war--although his statements about the President are at variance with things McChrystal has told me in the past. As I wrote last week, the backbiting has gotten very intense--on all sides--as the frustrations of the mission mount. What is surprising is his willingness to express these opinions on the record, and that he allows his staff to do the same. The lack of discipline and the disrespect he has shown his Commander-in-Chief are very much at odds with military tradition and practice.posted by ericb at 8:55 AM on June 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
I suppose he will have to be sacked now. He is not irreplaceable. There are more than a few fine generals in the Army, including Lt. General David Rodriguez, a McChrystal deputy with vast experience in Afghanistan. But it is a terrible setback, a diversion from the business hand at a crucial moment in the conflict. And it is a real tragedy, because Stanley McChrystal is precisely the sort of man who should be leading American troops in battle."
"... As I wrote for the Washington Independent, firing [McChrystal] carries its risks. There’s only a year to go before the July 2011 date to begin the transition to Afghan security responsibility and the Kandahar tide is starting to rise. It’ll be hard to fire McChrystal without ripping the entire Afghanistan strategy up, and I’ve gotten no indication from the White House that it’s interested in doing that. On the other hand, if senior administration officials are and I just haven’t picked up on it, McChrystal just gave them their biggest opportunity.posted by ericb at 9:01 AM on June 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
... And what an opportunity. ... The amazing thing about it is there’s no complaints from McChrystal or his staff about the administration on any substantive ground. After all, McChrystal and his allies won the argument within the White House. All the criticisms — of Eikenberry, of Jones, of Holbrooke, of Biden — are actually just immature and arrogant snipes at how annoying Team America (what, apparently, McChrystal’s crew calls itself) finds them. This is not mission-first, to say the least.
In fact, you have to go deep in the piece to find soldiers and officers offering actual critiques — and what they offer is criticism of McChrystal for being insufficiently brutal. Everyone of them quoted here is a mini-Ralph Peters, upset because McChrystal won’t let them 'get our fucking gun on,' as one puts it. I have a lot of respect for Michael Hastings, the author of the profile, but there are many greyer shades of on-the-ground military perspective than that, and I’ve seen them up close. But Hastings does a good and insightful job of showing that McChrystal is stepping into a diplomatic vacuum and acting as an advocate for Hamid Karzai despite Karzai’s performance in office.
We’ll have to wait for Wednesday to see if McChrystal keeps his command. My guess is he’ll stay, because now the White House knows that a chastened McChrystal isn’t going to say anything else outside of his lane to any reporter. McChrystal’s apology, emailed to me and other reporters well before the Rolling Stone story dropped, suggests that he wasn’t trying to walk away from his command in a blaze of arrogance. But it’s on him to repair his relationship with his colleagues and his bosses."
• 73 percent of military personnel are comfortable with lesbians and gays (Zogby International, 2006).posted by ericb at 9:09 AM on June 22, 2010 [31 favorites]
• One in four U.S. troops who served in Afghanistan or Iraq knows a member of their unit who is gay (Zogby, 2006).
• Majorities of weekly churchgoers (60 percent), conservatives (58 percent), and Republicans (58 percent) now favor repeal (Gallup, 2009).
• Seventy-five percent of Americans support gays serving openly - up from just 44 percent in 1993 (ABC News/Washington Post, 2008).
• In 1993 RAND Corp. concluded that openly gay people in the U.S. military do not negatively impact unit cohesion, morale, good order, or military readiness.
• Several other military-commissioned and GAO studies have concluded that open service does not undermine military readiness, troop morale or national security.
• Studies of the militaries in Australia, Israel, Great Britain and Canada have shown open service to have no adverse effect on enrollment or retention.
• The total number of countries allowing openly gay service is 24. The US and Turkey are the only two original NATO countries that still have bans in place.
• Today, there are at least 65,000 gay Americans serving on active duty and one million gay veterans in the United States, according to the Urban Institute.
• The CIA, FBI, State Department, the Defense Department on the civilian side, and defense contractors do not discriminate based on sexual orientation.*
I don't think he should be fired for speaking out, the regulations against it are fundamentally anti-free speech.
While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside of it.Second, "don't publicly contradict your boss" is an essential rule rule in any line of business, especially when your boss is the president of the United States.
America electing someone who truly believes in Armageddon to a position where they control the deployment of our nuclear arsenal is fucking suicide.
The worst part about all of this is fucking Rolling Stone gets to pretend to be legitimate while planning next month's "Fergie's back, and she's serious" special cover issue.They do some pretty good journalism on the side, you know. For better or worse, more people will buy that coverstory on Fergie than will buy a cover story about Afghanistan. If the former effectively funds the latter, so be it.
Okay, right here, I'm going to call this out. I know a lot of hipsters. Arguably I am a hipster, depending on who's making the call. I don't care what problems you might have with hipsters' clothing, or musical preferences, or ironic tendencies, or whatever the fuck else, but where the fuck do you get the idea that hipsters are homophobic?But that's the whole thing, people who say that may not homophobic, they just say that because that's what's said without thinking about it. Or they think they're being 'edgy' or something. They don't think about whether or not it offends gays when they say it.
888. ART. 88. CONTEMPT TOWARD OFFICIALSposted by saulgoodman at 9:53 AM on June 22, 2010
Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.
He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.Yeah, commanding them to do things beyond the pale of acceptable human conduct, like dropping bombs on village weddings from unmanned drones (ok, hyperbole, since I know those are run by the unaccountable CIA ops there).
But if you wanted to read that profile, rather than rely on a couple of pull quotes or the punditocracy? Tough luck: Rolling Stone didn't even bother putting it online before they rolled it out. In fact, despite the fact that everyone else's website led the profile, Rolling Stone's site led with Lady Gaga's (admittedly impressive) machine gun jumblies all day and didn't even put the story online until 11:00 ET.Machine gun jumblies?
"[Michael] Hastings said he basically stumbled onto unprecedented access with McChrystal.posted by ericb at 12:45 PM on June 22, 2010 [3 favorites]
After McChrystal's press advisors accepted a request for a profile in Rolling Stone, Hastings joined McChrystal and his team in Paris. It was supposed to be a two-day visit, followed up by more reporting time in Afghanistan.
The volcano in Iceland, however, changed the plans. As the ash disrupted air travel, Hastings ended up being 'stuck' with McChrystal and his team for 10 days in Paris and Berlin.
Due to the volcano, McChrystal had to travel from Paris to Berlin by bus. Hastings said McChrystal and his aides were drinking on the road trip "the whole way."
'They let loose,' he said. 'I don't blame them; they have a hard job.'
Hastings then traveled with McChrystal in Afghanistan for more reporting. In the end, what was originally supposed to be a two-day visit, turned into a month, in part thanks to the disruptions created by the volcano.
Hastings said McChrystal was very 'candid' with him and knew their conversations were for reporting purposes. 'Most of the time I had a tape recorder in his face or a notebook in my hand,' he said.
Hastings said most of the critical comments, which are now causing a stir, were said in the first 24 hours or so of his reporting.
'It wasn't a case of charming him into anything,' said Hastings.
He added that there hasn't been any push back or denials from McChrystal because has most of the quotes on tape.
Hastings has done a few trips to Afghanistan before, but is better known for his reporting in Iraq."
“The mother of the slain football player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman sought to warn President Obama against making General Stanley McChrystal his commander in Afghanistan.posted by ericb at 12:52 PM on June 22, 2010 [1 favorite]
Mary Tillman said in an unpublished interview this year that she wrote to Obama and called Senators and members of Congress seeking to block McChrystal's appointment when she learned that he was under consideration for the post.
She called the lack of deliberation leading to his appointment ‘disgusting’ in the interview, given before today's Rolling Stone article spurred intense tension between the general and the White House. An audio recording of the interview was provided to POLITICO by the interviewer, who asked to remain anonymous.
McChrystal has been accused of involvement in covering up of the fact that Tillman had been shot by his own comrades, having approved a citation for a posthumous medal that attributed his death to ‘enemy fire,’ though the general also penned a memo warning the White House against describing the circumstance of Tillman's death for fear of future embarrassment.
An official investigation blamed McChrystal for ‘inaccurate and misleading assertions’ in the formal recommendation of Tillman for a Silver Star.”
I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the President. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail. (source)posted by enn at 2:20 PM on June 22, 2010 [9 favorites]
"The Twitter post from Klein's magazine offered the 'clarification' that the general has 'offered to resign' he has NOT submitted his resignation."posted by ericb at 3:39 PM on June 22, 2010
the emerging backstory is a lot of this was said as Billy and the Boys were drinking, hard, on a bus trip with the reporter present
How Rolling Stone Won The News Cycle And Lost The Story---
In a multi-platform, multimedia environment, it's difficult for a magazine to break the kind of news that will lead every cable broadcast, every newspaper and every website for hours on end. But that's what the Rolling Stone profile (written by Michael Hastings, who is currently in Afghanistan) of General Stanley McChrystal did this morning.
But if you wanted to read that profile, rather than rely on a couple of pull quotes or the punditocracy? Tough luck: Rolling Stone didn't even bother putting it online before they rolled it out. In fact, despite the fact that everyone else's website led the profile, Rolling Stone's site led with Lady Gaga's (admittedly impressive) machine gun jumblies all day and didn't even put the story online until 11:00 ET.
Should it? I'm glad McChrystal is gone (though at this time is says he's "submitted his resignation," and that Obama hasn't accepted it.) But that doesn't make it not upsetting that apparently you can't "look forward" past saying nasty things about you in a once-relevant magazine but you can for, I don't know, war crimes your predecessor's administration committed. -- XQUZYPHYRI doubt Obama gives a crap about him talking smack about some of the civilian leaders (but not Obama specifically). But there seems to be a strange kind of "Washington consensus" around this. It makes sense that generals should not talk crap about their civilian leaders, but this is relatively minor. Almost everyone has talked crap about their bosses every once in a while.
Obama, however, spurred by Joe Biden, fought back, virtually accusing Gates and Mullen of insubordination, and countering with White House leaks that cast doubt on the wisdom of an open-ended commitment. Finally, a deal was struck, which gave the military the extra troops it wanted, but created the summer 2011 deadline for withdrawals to begin. Almost immediately, Clinton, Gates and Petraeus began publicly downplaying the deadline, which confirmed the suspicions of pundits that it was mostly for show. But Alter claims that behind closed doors, Obama told the military brass again and again that after eighteen months their time was up. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in eighteen months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?”So rather than face his failures in Afghanistan honorably, McChrystal flamed out and deactivated his metaphorical MeFi account. Good riddance.
Ever since last December, when Obama told a crowd at West Point that he was both sending reinforcements to Afghanistan and planning to begin withdrawing them eighteen months later, most commentators have assumed that the surge is real but the timetable is fake. The more money the military spends and the more blood it spills, goes the logic, the more invested it will become in the fight. And since barely anyone believes that America and its allies will have crippled the Taliban by next summer, Generals David Petraeus and Stanley McChrystal will presumably block any substantial withdrawal. After all, as David Halberstam details in The Best and the Brightest, civilians tend to delude themselves that military deployments are like faucets they can turn off at will when, in fact, the more troops they send, the more authority they cede to the men with stripes on their shoulders. Stopping a war that the military does not want stopped requires a massive civil-military showdown, the kind that Harry Truman triggered when he fired Douglas MacArthur in 1951 because the general would not stop trying to reunify the Korean Peninsula. Few in the punditocracy believe Barack Obama would do any such thing.If indeed, the current escalation was directly a result of aggressive lobbying and political maneuvering on the part of McChrystal, Gates and Mullen, and their strategy has failed, then the failed strategy itself--with all of McChrystal's assurances of easy victory--demonstrates a profound lack of sound judgment.
....
The way Alter tells the story, last summer, General Petraeus, General McChrystal and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen leaked to the press that they wanted lots more troops for an indefinite period, thus backing Obama into a corner. Hillary Clinton and Robert Gates basically supported the brass. Obama, however, spurred by Joe Biden, fought back, virtually accusing Gates and Mullen of insubordination, and countering with White House leaks that cast doubt on the wisdom of an open-ended commitment. Finally, a deal was struck, which gave the military the extra troops it wanted, but created the summer 2011 deadline for withdrawals to begin. Almost immediately, Clinton, Gates and Petraeus began publicly downplaying the deadline, which confirmed the suspicions of pundits that it was mostly for show. But Alter claims that behind closed doors, Obama told the military brass again and again that after eighteen months their time was up. “If you can’t do the things you say you can in eighteen months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?” he asked Petraeus, Mullen and Gates. The U.S. must “not occupy what you cannot transfer” to the Afghans by 2011, he told McChrystal again and again.
The truth or falseness of the dicta is not the matter in question; though if the government in a box could turn so quickly into a bleeding ulcer, there must have been a fault (among other places) somewhere in McChrystal's thinking. Nobody asked him to explain or try to understand Afghanistan with these picturesque and mutually canceling metaphors.posted by saulgoodman at 9:57 AM on June 23, 2010
"I'm not sure how Obama could have handled this any better. He was genuinely graceful about McChrystal and his explanation of why he had to go made perfect sense. He called for unity within his adminstration in pursuing the war and sounded quite stalwart about both the war and about the strategy. More importantly, his choice of Petraeus as a replacement for McChrystal is a brilliant move: He gets a heavy-weight, an unassailable expert in this kind of warfare, and someone who presumably can step in pretty seamlessly. He also picked someone who has expressed (very diplomatic) misgivings about the July 2011 deadline and who will have the clout and credibility to tell the president that he can't afford to go down in troops when July comes, should circumstances warrant. (It should also be noted that this is a step down for Petraeus and he can't relish directly managing another war — that he will do so speaks to his selfless patriotism.) In short, Obama has made the most of a rotten situation."posted by ericb at 11:41 AM on June 23, 2010
Video of the President's statement this afternoon.
Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs.A citizen first and a soldier second, that is what best serves the interests of the state.
Even more about McChrystal: now it can be told. The story about him voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters. Yes, really. This puts to rest another false rumor: that McChrystal deliberately precipitated his firing because he wants to run for President.posted by lullaby at 6:38 AM on June 24, 2010
This isn't about some constant intellectual examination of the value of my military service in Iraq (and, yes, Afghanistan). Outside of political or even moral considerations, I still spent a total of 3-4 years during which my central concern was trying to keep many other people healthy and alive in a combat zone. Going from that to the average college student's life is bizarre and alienating and just kind of fucking weird sometimes. Is that so difficult to understand?It seems like it takes pretty tortured reasoning to avoid understanding it. A friend of mine who did three tours in Iraq came home with a short list of medals and letters of commendation for putting himself in harms way to save his fellow soldiers and a number of Iraqi civilians over the course of his time there. Morality of war aside, legality of the invasion aside, my friend as an individual spent his time shooting at people who shot at him and trying to keep people who didn't shoot at him safe.
Long wars are antithetical to democracy. Protracted conflict introduces toxins that inexorably corrode the values of popular government. Not least among those values is a code of military conduct that honors the principle of civilian control while keeping the officer corps free from the taint of politics.And Andrew Exum started a little discussion related to it on his blog, though he focuses on special operators. It might be closer to what I think you were trying to get at.
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posted by philip-random at 8:12 AM on June 22, 2010 [1 favorite]