THE TIMES: General Stanley McChrystal’s job as commander of US and Nato forces in Afghanistan was hanging by a thread after he was recalled to Washington today for mocking senior figures in the Obama Administration.
Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, described General McChrystal’s outburst as a “significant mistake”, while the White House said that the President was “angry”, and a top Democrat in Congress called for the General’s removal.
In an explosive magazine profile, General McChrystal is quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden, ridiculing Richard Holbrooke, the US special envoy to the region and saying he felt “betrayed” by his closest civilian colleague in Afghanistan, the US ambassador Karl Eikenberry.
Senior aides to General McChrystal also told Rolling Stone magazine that the general was “disappointed” by his first meeting with the President, calling it “a ten-minute photo op” with a Commander-in-Chief who “clearly didn’t know anything about him”. One aide also described the President’s National Security Advisor, General Jim Jones, as a “clown” stuck in “1985”.
Aides said the general had prevailed in the titanic battles over US policy in Afghanistan only “by keeping his eye on the real enemy — the wimps in the White House”. Read on and comment >>> Giles Whittell and Jerome Starkey | Tuesday, June 22, 2010
POLITICO: Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s MacArthur Moment was more than an embarrassment for the White House – it was a reminder of just how badly Barack Obama’s “good war” in Afghanistan is going.
The challenge facing Obama in responding to his loose-lipped Afghan commander has an obvious parallel in Harry Truman’s firing of Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.
But it may actually be more comparable to a more chronic presidential leadership crisis — Abraham Lincoln’s dilemma during the Civil War, when vacillating public opinion, insubordination and strategic uncertainties forced Lincoln to repeatedly reshuffle his general staff.
“Afghanistan is a mess and it’s getting worse. To make matters worse, the president’s been dealing with internal squabbling on this for some time,” says Steve Clemons, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation, a non-partisan Washington think-tank, who has written extensively on Afghanistan. >>> Glenn Thrush | Tuesday, June 22, 2010
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