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Here's Some of the 'Rolling Stone' McChrystal Profile
It's rough. I mean: "'Who's he going to dinner with?' I ask one of his aides. 'Some French minister,' the aide tells me. 'It's fucking gay.'" Update: We hear Rolling Stone will actually put this up later today; meanwhile lots of people are hosting PDFs, which is not really ethically fair but, well, the Internet! Here we are. Update update! And it's up!
That is how you get screwed into going to dinner, I guess.
Also, what total morons, all of them.
You don't hire warriors for their savoir-faire. But I hope everyone who meets him pronounces his name like it's spelled, with the hard "ch."
I should have read your comment before i started typing.
You should just move to New York and become my willing slave. But, you know, priorities.
I love youz, Spahtacus.
Q: You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with cheese in France?
A: Fucking gay.
Too bad they can't revive this as an official response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKmJPnAGUJk
Jeeps, somebody has already resigned over this.
Duncan Boothby just wanted to be cool and hang out with Rolling Stone reporters, is that too much to ask!??!
"Boothby's appointment was seen as supplementing the general in an area where he was weak." I'll say.
I just don't understand why these guys we hire to kill for a living don't have a better sense of decorum.
Um, right??? Has anyone ever met people in the military before? Or, I mean, anyone at work ever? It's not like I haven't talked like this in EVERY OFFICE IN WHICH I'VE EVER WORKED.
Hah! Yeah! This is how human beings act, especially human beings who are not on the front line of PR.
Hence our ceaseless push for more robots in the military.
But to a reporter? About your bosses? Who have bent over backwards and alienated a lot of people in order to give you everything you asked for? Fucking gay.
From Politico:
The top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has been summoned to the White House to explain remarks he made to a freelance writer that portrays a series of unflattering remarks McChrystal made about President Obama and other top administration officials. The face-to-face comes as pundits are already calling for McChrystal to resign.
Agreed with flossy. It's not at all that the guy swears or is angry or whatever. Nobody can slam his bosses like that in the press and get away with it, I don't reckon.
@barhouse:
See Korea Re: MacArthur
See Civil War re McClellan
And don't forget Stormin' Norman just ignoring Bush and doing whatever the fuck he felt like during the first Gulf War.
You don't end up General by being politically correct and beautifully tactful.
I don't know- I work around a number of people who are both active and inactive military. Of course they talk shit behind closed doors, just like the rest of us. They're human. But there's a decorum involved where you don't discuss things in such blunt terms, particularly if you're an active servicemember. Like him or not, the President is your commander-in-chief. To reiterate what Flossy said: in the presence of a reporter?! The active personnel I'm around wouldn't say that kind of thing in front of ANYONE they don't know intimately. It's reckless, everyone knows it, and it totally damages the importance of chain-of-command.
It's not a matter of lack of decorum, it's insubordination, or at the very least the very blatant appearance of insubordination. If a General disrepects the Commander in Chief, he is sending a clear message to those under his command that he considers respect for authority meaningless.
There are plenty of lines of work where respect for authority is not so vital a part of the job description, but even in a newspaper office you're going to be called on the carpet for badmouthing, for attribution, the publisher.
@saythatscool McClellan!? He was totally fired!! Plus he was just about the world's worst general. MacArthur was removed from command too, eventually.
Agreed. There are obvious differences between a Boy Scout troop and an army fighting a war, but I think there's still a lot of salience to the idea of leading by example. (Or I'm a hopeless naif.) What is Private Joe Blow supposed to think when he sees his commander calling the President and his top aides a bunch of weenies? The whole thing is counterproductive at best, and completely fucked at worst.
@saythats: And Patton in WWII
@choire: Actually, Choire, I've got several friends in the military who are almost without fail scrupulously thoughtful about what they say. Even enlisted seals and marines – with whom I've gotten astonishingly hammered – reserve *any* discussion about politics or their superior officers.
@barnhouse: But McClellan was fired for insubordination and then rehired. He got canned again for what he did on the battlefield, not what he said to the press. Also I agree with Abe, Patton in WWII is also a perfect example.
Kinda woulda been better for everyone if McClellan stayed fired for what he said to the press, no?
Patton never mocked the civilian leadership during WWII. He went off menu in his comments about the Soviets and the Brits.
I might add that it's particularly galling that someone who sold his strategy on the basis of being able to "win hearts and minds" would put his foot in his mouth so spectacularly. What exactly is he saying to Afghanis to convince them that we're the good guys? "You're either with us, or you're a total fag?"
I mean, this:
"Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed
to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict."
…that seems like bad strategy, doesn't it? At least when fighting an insurgency.
If this shouldn't convince Obama that he needs to give up attempting to wipe lotion on chafed Republican bottoms, then I don't know what will.
@uncle: Well, I don;t know about "mocked" but I'd call his insubordination of Eisenhower and his public opinions (against Presidential policy) about the Russians in post war europe to be quite the display.
@Abe: I think this thing is different from that thing.
Really? Patton criticisms and comments got him relieved of command of the Third Army. Again, it's not mocking but it sure as hell was insubordinate behavior.
@abe: the quote that got him removed is:
"ell, why do we care what those goddamn Russians think? We are going to have to fight them sooner or later, within the next generation. Why not do it now while our Army is intact and the damn Russians can have their hind end kicked back to Russia in three months? We can do it easily with the help of the German troops we have, if we just arm them and take them with us. They hate the bastards."
While this was in direct contradiction with Ike's policy's – and certainly the directive for Patton to keep his mouth shut – it's not even remotely in the same ball park as "Biden / Bite me."
"not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn?" WTF is THAT?!?!?! How many people have seen Rescue Dawn? Reminds me of the fertilization of seeing everything military through the spectrum of cinema from the opening of "The Beach."
i've seen 'little dieter needs to fly' so i think i'm covered?
See, I saw more of a Newsies thing going on?
Methinks Harden must be a GAY French Minister!
Son, we live in a world that has walls, and those walls have to be guarded by men with guns. Whose gonna do it? You? You, Michael Hastings? I have a greater responsibility than you could possibly fathom. You weep for politically correct language, and you curse the army. You have that luxury. You have the luxury of not knowing what I know. That using words like "gay," while tragic, probably saves lives. And my existence, while grotesque and incomprehensible to you, saves lives. You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me in Afghanistan, you need me in Afghanistan. We use words like honor, code, loyalty. We use these words as the backbone of a life spent accomplishing something. You use them as a punchline. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a bunch of people reading blogs when they're supposed to be working who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very freedom that I provide, and then questions the manner in which I conduct myself in hotel rooms before gay dinners. I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post. Either way, I don't give a damn what you think you are entitled to.
Yes, this. Although "gay" is a bit antiquated.
Not so sure it's the "gay" thing that will get him in trouble with anyone. That shit is pretty funny. The guy comes across as likable and able. The real meat of the article is that no one, most importantly his troops on the ground, see COIN as viable. It's a no-win war and the general and his aides say as much. Whole article is here:
http://markhalperin.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/r1109mcchrystal.pdf
He meant "geigh"
No, and not even a nice try. Even borderline insubordination to the backup commander-in-chief is not a good look. NOT ABOVE LAW, NOT ABOVE PRESIDENT. Done.
I believe the General has some "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" questions to address.
I'm sure he cried out "no homo!" after dinner was done.
Rolling Stone is going to be a case-study in Dinosaur Journalism with this fuck-up. Politico took it down – but Mark Halperin has it:
http://markhalperin.files.wordpress.com/2010/06/r1109mcchrystal.pdf
Grab it before the lawyers at Wenner World put the pressure on him too. And fucking distribute it to everyone – show those idiots at RS how media works these days and the traffic they missed out on. Nice reporting – idiocy when it comes to distribution.
Nearly exact same thing happened with Taibbi's "Vampire Squid" GS article, and it doesn't appear that they've learned any lessons since then…
I guess maybe they have.
In all fairness, if making fun of Joe Biden was a crime, we would all be in jail.
…and Biden makes fun of himself much better than anyone else would, so he'd be the first in cuffs.
the military is pretty clear on this. bitching goes up the ladder. shit rolls downhill.
in the end, everyone's subordinate to gravity.
I disagree with most of you. The General's gotta GTFO. He committed an act of serious nsubordination and therefore he doesn't really have the right to retain his position any more. The only problem is I don't think our Commander-in-Chief will understand that.
Yep, he should go. I also doubt the W.H. will make it happen.
Yup. The POTUS wants to be liked more than he wants to be respected.
Yeah, that Obama…he's done sooooooooooo much to earn everyone's respect.
If I were in ANY branch of the US Military, I would be looking forward to a retirement, discharge, or any means possible to GTFO because the the USCINC is an A.H.
The mistake by the good General was to trust ANYONE who has ever written one word for that Socialist rag NEWSWEEK.
It's now online in full at Rolling Stone:
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/17390/119236
Sigh… Michael Herr this is not.
Agree w/A Sullivan on this: "Maybe deploying McChrystal to do his best – and still fail – will be the only way of proving this. Which is why this incident is actually, to my mind, a good thing. It may help bring this madness to an earlier end."
There are obviously very serious issues to consider here, but I'm amazed no one has brought up one of the most damning aspects of this article: dude likes Bud Light Lime. That stuff is deadly poison!
And of course the backstory comes out. That's how reporting is done: stuck on a bus with your subject and a lot of Bud Light Lime.
Indeed. Rolling stone and Hastings win. Everyone else, including us, loses.
Colonel Abe Sauer…did you order the "Code Red"?
God bless you and your commentary…a formal dinner with a French Minister is indeed inherently "GAY"
Ahem, has everyone forgotten that the lil' Dutchboy in the WH still hasn't plugged the leak in Gulf? You know the guy who said "I'm Responsible"
"MISDIRECTION is the key to the whitehouse spin machine"
That you, Sailor?