McChrystal to Obama: Fogh You;

[G_j]

http://www.opednews.com/articles/McChrystal-to-Obama-Fogh-by-Ray-McGovern-091120-443.html

November 20, 2009 at 23:23:00

McChrystal to Obama: Fogh You; McChrystal Testing the Limits
by Ray McGovern

It is not too late for President Barack Obama to follow the example of Harry Truman, who fired Gen. Douglas McArthur in 1951 for insubordination. Then, as now, the stakes were high. Then it was Korea; now it is Afghanistan.

No more slaps on the wrist for Gen. Stanley McChrystal. In my view, Commander-in-Chief Obama should fire him for cause.

Then

In the Truman-McArthur showdown nearly six decades ago, the President and his senior advisers were preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations, when MacArthur, commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, issued an unauthorized statement containing a veiled threat to expand the war into China.


McArthur had been playing a back-channel game to win the support of like-minded Republican congressmen to widen the war, when Truman faced him down. With the backing of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as the secretaries of state and defense, he rose to the occasion and fired the distinguished “old soldier.”

Now

Today, Gen. McChrystal is conducting a subtler but equally insubordinate campaign for wider war in Afghanistan, with the backing of CENTCOM commander David Petraeus. It is now even clearer in retrospect that the President should not have appointed McChrystal in the first place, given what was already known of his role in covering up the killing of football star Pat Tillman and condoning the torture practices by troops under McChrystal's earlier command in Iraq.

..more..

http://www.heraldsun.com/pages/full_story/push?article-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House%20&id=3974209-Hersh-+Military+waging+war+with+White+House&instance=homethirdleft

Hersh: Military waging war with White House

By Neil Offen , 1 month ago
[e-mail]

DURHAM — The U.S. military is not just fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, America’s most renowned investigative journalist says.

The army is also “in a war against the White House — and they feel they have Obama boxed in,” Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Seymour Hersh told several hundred people in Duke University’s Page Auditorium on Tuesday night. “They think he’s weak and the wrong color. Yes, there’s racism in the Pentagon. We may not like to think that, but it’s true and we all know it.”

In a speech on Obama’s foreign policy, Hersh, who uncovered the My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War and torture at Abu Ghraib prison during the Iraqi war, said many military leaders want Obama to fail.

“A lot of people in the Pentagon would like to see him get into trouble,” he said. By leaking information that the commanding officer in Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, says the war would be lost without an additional 40,000 American troops, top brass have put Obama in a no-win situation, Hersh contended.

“If he gives them the extra troops they’re asking for, he loses politically,” Hersh said. “And if he doesn’t give them the troops, he also loses politically.”

The journalist criticized the president for “letting the military do that,” and suggested the only way out was for Obama to stand up to them.

“He’s either going to let the Pentagon run him or he has to run the Pentagon,” Hersh said. If he doesn’t, “this stuff is going to be the ruin of his presidency.”

..more..

[Tansy_Gold]

1. All of which is disappointing but not really surprising

Candidate Obama was much more decisive than President Obama.

And that's a shame.




TG

[still_one]

2. He should replace the sob. Do it with petraus /nt

[HowHasItComeToThis]

7. RELIEVE HIM

[EFerrari]

17. Petraeus is dirty, too. Geezus, aren't any of those general officers clean?

[still_one]

21. Probably, but Petraeus never circumvented his commander and chief /nt

[me b zola]

24. Betrayus was given that name for a reason...

"Today, Gen. McChrystal is conducting a subtler but equally insubordinate campaign for wider war in Afghanistan, with the backing of CENTCOM commander David Petraeus.

[jonnyblitz]

37. are you for real?

jesus christ. :puke:

[optimator]

3. firing is not enough

I may sound like a broken record but this shit McChrystal has done is criminal and a lower enlisted soldier would go to jail.
Obama MUST punish him or its all over.

[G_j]

5. McChrystal's Pat Tillman Connection

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090525/zirin2

McChrystal's Pat Tillman Connection

By Dave Zirin

May 13, 2009

When NFL player-turned-Army Ranger Pat Tillman died at the hands of US troops in a case of "friendly fire," the spin machine at the Pentagon went into overdrive. Rumsfeld and company couldn't have their most high-profile soldier dying in such an inelegant fashion, especially with the release of those pesky photos from Abu Ghraib hitting the airwaves. So an obscene lie was told to Tillman's family, his friends and the American public. The chickenhawks in charge, whose only exposure to war was watching John Wayne movies, claimed that he died charging a hill and was cut down by the radical Islamic enemies of freedom. In the weeks preceding his death, Tillman was beginning to question what exactly he was fighting for, telling friends that he believed the war in Iraq was " illegal." He may not have known what he was fighting for, but it's now clear what he died for: public relations. Today, after five years, six investigations and two Congressional hearings, questions still linger about how Tillman died and why it was covered up.


Now the man who greased the chain of command that orchestrated this great deception is prepared to assume total control of US operations in Afghanistan: Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was McChrystal who approved Tillman's posthumous Silver Star, a medal given explicitly for combat, even though he later testified that he "suspected" friendly fire.

Yet despite this, both Democrats and Republicans are rushing to heap praise on McChrystal, including Sen. John McCain. It was McCain who rushed to speak at Tillman's funeral and then, when the cover-up became known, pledged to help the Tillman family expose the truth. McCain later turned his back on the Tillmans when they raised the volume and demanded answers. As Pat's mother, Mary Tillman, said last year, "He definitely eased out of the situation. He didn't blatantly say he wouldn't help us, it's just that it became clear that he kind of drifted away."

And now the Tillman family, amidst bipartisan praise for Obama's new general, must once again raise the inconvenient truth.
Pat's father, Pat Tillman Sr., told the Associated Press, "I do believe that guy participated in a falsified homicide investigation."

..more..

[gateley]

6. I'm thinking he MIGHT be waiting until he makes his decision, sees how it

turns out (I'm assuming he'll send fewer troops or none at all, please God) -- then have McChrystal 'resign'.

I'd like to see Obama loudly kick some ass, on this issue and on others, but I'm beginning to realize that's not an Obama we're going to see. :(

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

31. So if McChrystal doesn't go to fail it's all over? What is all over?

[chill_wind]

4. This is not a battle Pres Obama can afford to lose.

I feel sure he must know that.

[EmeraldCityGrl]

8. I hope Obama still has his Blackberry

and is aware of the wise advice from people like Sy Hersh.

[Cirque du So-What]

9. Gen. MacArthur was practically a demigod

by the time that the Korean War broke out, yet Harry Truman decided to take the political risk and remove him from the theater & conduct the war as he saw fit. Gen McChrystal? Nowhere near a demigod.

[chill_wind]

10. And Gates has maybe outlived his tenure, too

Right-wing pressure, including from Robert Gates, the defense secretary Obama kept on from the Bush administration, will not abate. At a press conference yesterday, Gates, who reportedly favors sending 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan made it seem like a foregone conclusion that the President will opt (has opted?) to escalate. He said:

“"I anticipate that as soon as the president makes his decision, we can probably begin flowing some forces pretty quickly after that.”

[G_j]

12. I noticed that also

that's called second guessing your superior.

[bridgit]

11. This world McChrystal continues to 'get his run in daily' remains a very dangerous world...

without doubt *and/or* in spite of their opaque, lesser sense of longitudinal war planning able to point to a conclusion. The careered chiefs all joint or otherwise are performing a lesser service by communicating to the rank in the field, so ineffectively, the ills and trappings of over-the-horizon empire

[dusmcj]

13. you have to consider the author of this piece

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer and then a CIA analyst for 27 years, and is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

this suggests there is a nonzero probability he is compromised if not coopted. I'm sure that the administration knows that; so should the readership here.

[ShortnFiery]

14. What the Fox!?!

When someone seemingly speaks truth to power, it doesn't count to some here, if it's "a democrat" in the White House.

Please? This rationale is so lame it makes me physically shudder. Ray McGovern has spoken up time and time again ... when it wasn't a feather in his cap (to his personal/professional benefit) to do so.

To many progressives here at DU, Ray McGovern is an American Patriot. :patriot:

[G_j]

15. he was a fierce critic of Bush and gang.

A good writer, I think he's proven by now to pretty spot on.

[ShortnFiery]

16. Yes, that's spot on!

Ray McGovern is the opposite of being "co-opted" but a man of moral courage. Given his extensive background in the US Military (Infantry) as well as later within the Intelligence Community, I can only imagine the pressures that he was confronted with to just "go along to get along."

Further, I always enjoy catching him on C-SPAN the few instances he's been on. McGovern is very unassuming and presents his perspectives with both detail and clarity.

p.s. The Phoenix Coyotes won against the Philidelphia Flyers ---> Shoot out! Yea! :silly:

[dusmcj]

20. you need to get over your wish for heroes to adulate or you'll become impotent mutual affirmers

instead, be heroes yourselves - don't trade responsibility for adulation and the comfort of membership in a group which busies itself mutually affirming that it has discovered the truth and doesn't have time to apply it to the outside world.

In this case, Truman would have kicked much of the 'progressive' tribe to the curb as a bunch of softassed pantywaists. He jettisoned MacArthur (himself originally a pantywaist mama's boy from the womb of good society) because Mac challenged civilian leadership of the military, and because Democratic warmaking had a record of success which didn't rely on the jingoism of the Republicans but on a sense of geopolitics which included an understanding of when the use of force was an imperative.

Recent Democratic leadership has not shown itself to be reliably responsible when it comes to objectively assessing such geopolitical imperatives, but instead more concerned with the effects on the electorate of positions taken. Sorry, no cigar. Just as the health care reform question requires that people be ready to sacrifice reelection in order to use the majority WE HAVE to pass real health care reform, foreign policy is even less an electoral popularity contest, and even more a situation in which the right, or at least best, answer, must be found, regardless of how popular that is with the electorate. Most of whom are too ignorant here in the USA to even participate in the discussion, nevermind form an informed opinion. The President, as Clinton before him, seems to be an exception to this situation, both on the ignorance fronts and also in the area of responsibility as a politician, but he has few peers, and instead too many fellows who are more concerned with appearing in media stories than actually contributing to an optimal solution. P - A - N - D - E - R - I - N - G. Regardless of which corner of the electorate is targeted, the behavior is the same.

[ShortnFiery]

39. You simply need to get over yourself.

There's no sense to be made out of your rambling rant above. :crazy:

[dusmcj]

19. so what

>To many progressives here at DU, Ray McGovern is an American Patriot.

That's not necessarily a recommendation without other evidence to support the suggestion. (Since 'progressive' has grown an unfortunate rind of dogmatic ideological line-toeing reminiscent of a certain party across the aisle, including here.)

[G_j]

22. There is plenty to read

if you want to look into McGovern's articles etc. I've read enough over the years to find him reliable.
That just might be why he is respected, as opposed to "dogmatic ideological line-toeing reminiscent of a certain party across the aisle"
:thumbsdown:

[chill_wind]

25. His body of writing and open public activism

suggests completely otherwise. You almost seem like someone who has never read a thing he's written or heard him speak. How could that be?

[classysassy]

18. MacGlass is breaking the rules

and he should be replaced.

[barbtries]

23. i wrote to the white house this morning

and suggested just that. fire the bastards who are stabbing him in the back. goodgawd, just let 'em go.

[G_j]

35. __

:thumbsup:
:applause:

[lonestarnot]

26. So what's it going to be Mr. President?

[Ikonoklast]

27. The solution is 'rope'.

And Obama is letting the general take as much as he needs.

But he better be beware of that sudden stop when he reaches the end of it.

[lonestarnot]

28. I hope you are correct! Waiting and watching.

[lebkuchen]

29. The Tilman family begged Obama not to go w/McCrystal

McCrystal is as black-ops (black-oops?) as they come.

Now Obama is stuck with him.

[bvar22]

30. Obama SHOULD have fired him ...

...the day McChrystal held his first Press Conference
...Unless Obama is just a pawn of Wall Street, The Health Insurance Industry, and the War Profiteers.


The DLC New Team

(Screen Capped from the DLC Website)

[G_j]

36. yikes

that's scary..

[lib2DaBone]

32. Maybe Obama should say Fogh You and yank all funding.. bring the troops home...

..maybe someone in Washington should stand up for main-street America?

Just a crazy thought.....

[druidity33]

34. funding is Congress' job...

the purse-strings thing, you know?

:shrug:

[DU GrovelBot]

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[invictus]

38. kick

[G_j]

40. kick

[G_j]

41. so did Obama cave?

[anonymous171]

42. Obama does not have the glands for that. He's like Jimmy Carter without the moral backbone. nt