McChrystal Correctly Removed

Still, It’s a Raw Deal
John R. Houk
© June 24, 2010

The big story today is President G. W. Bush’s General of choice to give America’s Coalition of the Willing is taking over from a General McChrystal who upset enough to break Article 88 rules of a military Officer criticizing civilian leadership. Of course McChrystal did not criticize just any civilian leader; he criticized his Commander-in-Chief President Barack Hussein Obama and his Administration.

I have to admit I was a bit amused that General McChrystal had the guts to criticize the Captain of global appeasement – BHO. Even so General McChrystal got off lucky by not being court marshaled according to Article 88. The reality is General McChrystal was fired. Officially McChrystal resigned from Command in Afghanistan. McChrystal statement:

International Security Assistance Headquarters

2010-06-CA-007
For Immediate Release

This morning the President accepted my resignation as Commander of U.S. and NATO Coalition Forces in Afghanistan. I strongly support the President’s strategy in Afghanistan and am deeply committed to our coalition forces, our partner nations, and the Afghan people. It was out of respect for this commitment -- and a desire to see the mission succeed -- that I tendered my resignation.

It has been my privilege and honor to lead our nation’s finest.

General McChrystal’s status in the Army such as a new assignment or retirement has not been offered as of this writing; however I believe it would be a good guess McChrystal’s retirement announcement is his immediate future. Teeing off military unfriendly President Barack Hussein Obama probably is not a career extender in the U.S. military.

As much as I dislike the Obama agenda this is one time BHO did the right thing in removing a general whose remarks can obviously be construed as irreverence for civilian Constitutional rule of law. And BHO did the honorable thing by praising the old warrior’s service to America and not stringing General McChrystal up with a court marshal.

Now that General David Petraeus is the Big Dog chosen by BHO to do in Afghanistan what he accomplished in Iraq, it behooves American voters to understand General McChrystal’s frustration that for all intents and purposes has brought his military career to an end.

The primary reason for the public airing of disgruntlement seems to be a lack of engagement by the President in the Afghan Theatre followed closely by undermining by Obama Administration civilian leadership with McChrystal’s mandate to engage Islamic terrorists (oops, I mean combative insurgents).

For the case of enumeration the secondary reason (although NO less important than the primary reason) are the BHO mandated rules of engagement. The essence of those rules plays out like even if you know the enemy is coming but you don’t see a weapon DO NOT engage. Or it plays out like, even if you know Islamic terrorists are hiding in building, a village, a cave and so on; if there is any appearance of civilians around DO NOT engage.

Here are some examples of BHO’s rules of engagement:

Since the beginning, Obama has forced our troops to operate under the most ludicrous ACLU-approved rules of engagement, with both hands tied behind their backs, as if they were mere state troopers, rather than soldiers fighting a war. And McChrystal has complied with this insanity at every turn, but obviously, has finally reached his breaking point.

From the Rolling Stone article at the center of this controversy:

They are especially angered by Ingram’s death. His commanders had repeatedly requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal’s new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the request had been denied. 'These were abandoned houses,' fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. 'Nobody was coming back to live in them.'

One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. 'Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force,' the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that’s like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won’t have to make arrests. 'Does that make any f–king sense?' Pfc. Jared Pautsch. 'We should just drop a f–king bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?' (From Robert Moon)

Moon’s selection from Rolling Stone was thankfully shortened. It is Rolling Stone of course; thus the authors use of profanity and the writing down of soldiers’ anger is completely unsanitized. The profanity does serve one point though. The Troops are extremely unhappy about the rules of engagement because they do more to harm Americans warring with Islamic terrorists than to the terrorists themselves.

More examples of the BHO rules of engagement:

… occasionally there are riveting communications, such as a recent e-mail from a noncommissioned officer (NCO) serving in Afghanistan. He explains why the rules of engagement for U.S. troops are “too prohibitive for coalition forces to achieve sustained tactical successes.”

Receiving mortar fire during an overnight mission, his unit called for a 155mm howitzer illumination round to be fired to reveal the enemy’s location. The request was rejected “on the grounds that it may cause collateral damage.” The NCO says that the only thing that comes down from an illumination round is a canister, and the likelihood of it hitting someone or something was akin to that of being struck by lightning.

Returning from a mission, his unit took casualties from an improvised explosive device that the unit knew had been placed no more than an hour earlier. “There were villagers laughing at the U.S. casualties” and “two suspicious individuals were seen fleeing the scene and entering a home.” U.S. forces “are no longer allowed to search homes without Afghan National Security Forces personnel present.” But when his unit asked Afghan police to search the house, the police refused on the grounds that the people in the house “are good people.”

On another mission, some Afghan adults ran off with their children immediately before the NCO’s unit came under heavy small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs), and the unit asked for artillery fire on the enemy position. The response was a question: Where is the nearest civilian structure? “Judging distances,” the NCO writes dryly, “can be difficult when bullets and RPGs are flying over your head.” When the artillery support was denied because of fear of collateral damage, the unit asked for a “smoke mission” — like an illumination round; only the canister falls to earth — “to conceal our movement as we planned to flank and destroy the enemy.” This request was granted — but because of fear of collateral damage, the round was deliberately fired one kilometer off the requested site, making “the smoke mission useless and leaving us to fend for ourselves.” (From George Will with Hat Tip Flopping Aces)

Going off on Obama and his Administration was a strategic error a military commander of General McChrystal’s caliber should not have made. It was a strategic error of his long service but perhaps going off on the BHO military agenda will serve General Petraeus well to kick some butt in Afghanistan (and perhaps unruly Pakistani territory) and actually come away with a win rather than an Obama failure.

See Also:

Gateway Pundit

Jakarta Globe


JRH 6/24/10