Latest GOP Stunt on McChrystal Testimony Fails, and the GOP Is Lucky It Did

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http://washingtonindependent.com/61989/latest-gop-stunt-on-mcchrystal-testimony-fails-and-the-gop-is-lucky-it-did

Latest GOP Stunt on McChrystal Testimony Fails, and the GOP Is Lucky It Did
By Spencer Ackerman 10/1/09 6:02 PM


An amendment to the defense appropriations bill sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) to compel Gen. Stanley McChrystal to testify before Congress by mid-November has failed on a party-line vote of 59 to 40. It was an escalation of a gambit most recently backed by Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to cleave McChrystal from President Obama. But funny thing: the GOP might have ended up in a worse position if it got McChrystal to testify ahead of Obama’s decisions on Afghanistan strategy.

To understand why, really listen to McChrystal’s remarks to London’s Institute for International and Strategic Studies. The New York Times piece doesn’t do McChrystal’s performance justice. McChrystal reiterated his position that Afghan population security is necessary for a strategy to defeat al-Qaeda, but not at all in the thumbing-his-nose-at-Joe-Biden way that the Times portrays.

Instead, as I’ve been writing, McChrystal loudly and clearly defended Obama’s strategy review. Like a lot. When questioners asked if Obama needed to make a decision on Afghanistan strategy now, McChrystal replied with statements like, “Sir, I don’t think we have the luxury of going so fast we make the wrong decision.” While the Times quoted McChrystal saying, about his resource request, “I think if you don’t align the goals and the resources, you will have a significant problem. If we don’t do that, we will,” it left off the preceding part of his answer:

I think any decision to go forward will not just be based on resources, it will be based on what are our goals. And I know people are re-looking what our goals and objectives are and redefining and clarifying those, and I think that’s helpful. Once they do that, I think the resources, of course, are linked to that, because obviously you have to have a ways and means match. So, I don’t think that if we align our goals and our resources, we will have a significant problem. Our problem would be as — if we didn’t.

snip//


Does the GOP actually think that McChrystal is going to rebuke his still-popular commander-in-chief to curry favor with the minority party? Indeed, even taking such a cynical view, it’s better for the GOP for McChrystal to testify after Obama’s decision, because if he remains in command while being dissatisfied with the decision, then the Republicans will more likely to exploit that fissure in testimony. But McChrystal has given no indication at all that he’d serve in that capacity.

This is a strange place for the politics of national security. The minority party is hoping that McChrystal will somehow decide that it’s in his interest to throw his chips in with a powerless party rather than exercise the responsibilities of his command and cultivate a constructive relationship with both parties. It’s that kind of thinking that led John McCain to become the 44th president of the United States, partnering with Mitch McConnell’s 60-seat Senate majority.

And for its part, there are even some on the progressive side who misinterpret recent McChrystal interviews to fit into some desired insubordination narrative, whereby Obama — and by extension, the progressive movement — is absolved of responsibility for the war because of the nefarious machinations of a revanchist military. None of this is remotely true. And McChrystal’s remarks in London, read in their full context, prove it.