Why McChrystal Had To Go

From our country's earliest beginnings, the founding fathers knew the potential hazard of this or any country being taken over by a stratocracy -- a military dictatorship. To minimize that potential, they drafted, as part of our Constitution (Article 1 section 8), a specific structure that clearly positions the military under the direction of the Executive Branch of the Government and with their funding being controlled by Congress. Thus, their power is balanced between the two most prominent civilian legislative branches of government.

While it is important that we don't have a lap-dog military that can't express any concerns over the commands that they may receive from the Executive Branch, it is also important that they maintain a certain level of respect for the civilian leadership that they report to. That's because any erosion of that respect might actually create a situation whereby the military becomes autonomous to some degree; with the worst case resulting in some kind of coup.

The McChrystal situation presented a real conundrum because he is the primary architect of the military plan that is only half-way implemented in Afghanistan and prior to the draw down of troops starting next year. To lose him over his disrespectful comments may actually jeopardize the results of the war.

One option that was available to Obama was to elicit a public apology from McChrystal (assuming he's sorry). Then, bust him down by one or two stars from his four-star status and allow him to continue in his role as the Afghanistan commander. However, this ignores the fact that there might be a serious dissenting attitude in his command and below towards our civilian government.

I think the only real option for Obama was to have accepted McChrystal's resignation. He probably should have been stripped of some of his rank to show how serious an offense he had committed. For the protection of the precepts of our Constitution with regard to the military, Obama absolutely had no other option.

Our country has, probably, the best military in the world. No one man is irreplaceable. There are a lot of people in the ranks who could replace McChrystal and continue the plan in Afghanistan. Certainly, the replacement of McChrystal with Petraeus was a good choice but it might have just left Iraq exposed. In addition, Obama needs to strengthen his leadership skills so that this kind of disrespect doesn't fester once again. And, too, if we continue to see unrest in the military over the Administration's leadership, it is the people of this country who will need to reprimand Obama for his actions.

When The Ship Is Sinking

More than just some romantic ideal, the captain is usually the last man standing and usually does go down with his ship. Nothing could be more true than in Presidential politics. Especially if the President is in serious political trouble.

This week we have learned that Rahm Emanuel might be leaving after the mid-term elections with rumors that he is fed up with Obama's policies. Also, this week, we learned that Peter Orzag, Obama's Director of Management and Budget, is going to bail next month. After all, you can't blame Orzag for wanting to leave the budgetary mess that Obama saddled him with. Just prior to these revelations, Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, took a walk and quit his position.

Further, Obama's Afghanistan Commander, General McChrystal, made some very disparaging remarks about Joe Biden and the current Administration; and, indirectly, Obama. He had to fully know that those comments would lose him his job; and, I think he didn't care because the Afghanistan War isn't going well. Let's not forget that when McChrystal took this job, he was never given the full compliment of troops that he said he needed to add in order to win the war. I'll also bet any money, that McChrystal has been getting a lot of more guff than just that about the number of troops and he probably doesn't want to put up with it any more.

All of these situations come only a year and half after Obama took office; making you wonder what's going on internally within his Administration. We know that almost all the dealings with people and organizations that are on the outside of the Administration have to put up with this President's Chicago-style, bullying type of politics. Just look at what Obama has done with the banks, Wall Street, health care, and BP. So, it's probably logical that the same type of bullying goes on internally. Some might call it playing "hard ball" but, all too often, it is a thoughtless form of weak management. I know from the business world that, when you see a lot of people quitting a department, or getting fired for being disgruntled, it is either intentional -- as in cleaning house -- or as a result of bad management. Obviously, the latter must be the case since all of the above mentioned people were hired by Obama. I think this is just the first of many to jump ship and a sure sign of disorder within the Administration.

Afghanistan: The Biden Solution?

Increasingly, there are rumblings that Obama is considering implementing a Joe Biden plan for the war in Afghanistan; rather than take the advice of his appointed general overseeing that war. In essence, the Biden plan says we should conduct a protracted war in Afghanistan with limited troop support and concentrate on attacking Al Qaeda with remote-controlled drones by targeting their strongholds all along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. At the heart of this plan is the belief that we don't need to worry about the Taliban; as if, somehow, these just-radical-as-Al-Qaeda radicals pose no threat to America.

Apparently, people like Biden seem to forget that we wouldn't have even attacked Afghanistan if the ruling Taliban had simply turned over Bin Laden in the first place. But, they protected Bin Laden and the rest of Al Qaeda and Al Qaeda training camps and refused to give them up. This, then, resulted in the war that we have today. A war that has chased both the Taliban and Al Qaeda into the mountainous areas of Tora Bora. To back off now would just hand Afghanistan back over to the Taliban and, then, most likely, reestablish home sweet home for Al Qaeda.

If Biden had been such a spot-on military strategist in the past, I would say that we should consider his plan. However, he has been consistently out of step with both logic and reality. He was against the original Gulf War because he didn't think we could take Saddam's army. But, to the contrary, we defeated Saddam in just days.

Then, he was all "for" the second war with Iraq because he firmly believed that Saddam had those weapons of mass destruction. The left seems to forget that Biden was wrong, too, while they keep blaming Bush for the "lie" that Saddam had WMD's. Since then, Biden went on record saying that the surge wouldn't work. But, unfortunately for Biden's continuing reputation of being wrong, the surge did work and worked better than expected. Then there was his brilliant plan that the war in Iraq could be ended by just partitioning Iraq into three religious areas that were controlled by the Sunnis, Shiites, and the Kurds. Of course, instrumental to this insane idea was the fact that Sunnis, Kurds and Shia who were living in someone else's territory would have to be uprooted from their homes and moved to be with those of their own kind. Thank God Biden didn't have any input on desegregation plans of the 1960's in this country. Otherwise, all the Blacks of America would have wound up being cloistered in some isolated city/states in America.

The left has a history of not trusting the military and in believing that the military is only interested in war and more war. Because of this, the left has always believed that it is the military's own self interest to always want more troops. But, in reality, Generals, like anyone else, don't really want to go to war unless they can win without sustaining massive losses of either men or material. Also, most Generals believe that a strong military is a deterrent to war and not a reason to go to war; at least if the military is part of a peaceful society like ours.

Personally, I wouldn't bet on anything that Biden says. He is literally a gaffe-a-minute machine. This fact, alone, should give one pause to consider anything he says. To listen to him on Afghanistan is to ignore that fact and to ignore how terribly wrong he has been in the past. Yet, this President and the left of his party seem to think that Biden is the be-all and end-all when it comes to military planning. God help us all!