From Great Man to Great Screwup: Behind the McChrystal Uproar

by Norman Solomon

(Photo: US Army; Edited: Lance Page / t r u t h o u t)

When the wheels are coming off, it doesn't do much good to change the driver.

Whatever the name of the commanding general in Afghanistan, the US war effort will continue its carnage and futility.

Between the lines, some news accounts are implying as much. Hours before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's meeting with President Obama on Wednesday, The New York Times reported, "the firestorm was fueled by increasing doubts - even in the military - that Afghanistan can be won and by crumbling public support for the nine-year war as American casualties rise."

It now does McChrystal little good that news media have trumpeted everything from his Spartan personal habits (scarcely eats or sleeps) to his physical stamina (runs a lot) to his steel-trap alloy of military smarts and scholarship (reads history). Any individual is expendable.

For months, the McChrystal star had been slipping. A few days before the Rolling Stone piece caused a sudden plunge from war-making grace, Time magazine's conventional-wisdom weathervane Joe Klein was notably down on McChrystal's results: "Six months after Barack Obama announced his new Afghan strategy in a speech at West Point, the policy seems stymied."

Now, words like "stymied" and "stalemate" are often applied to the Afghanistan war. But that hardly means the US military is anywhere near withdrawal.

Walter Cronkite used the word "stalemate" in his famous February 1968 declaration to CBS viewers that the Vietnam War couldn't be won. "We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders both in Vietnam and Washington to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds," he said. And: "It seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate."

Yet, the US war on Vietnam continued for another five years, inflicting more unspeakable horrors on a vast scale.

Like thousands of other US activists, I've been warning against escalation of the Afghanistan war for a long time. Opposition has grown, but today the situation isn't much different than what I described in an article on December 9, 2008: "Bedrock faith in the Pentagon's massive capacity for inflicting violence is implicit in the nostrums from anointed foreign-policy experts. The echo chamber is echoing: the Afghanistan war is worth the cost that others will pay."

The latest events reflect unwritten rules for top military commanders: Escalating a terrible war is fine. Just don't say anything mean about your boss.

http://www.truth-out.org/from-great-man-great-screwup-behind-mcchrystal-uproar60701