Is the Military-Industrial Complex Using Gen. McChrystal to "Potty Train" Obama on Afghanistan?

Article II, Section I of the United States Constitution states "The president shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States". Civilian control of the military is one of the cornerstones of American democracy.

But with the growth of the national security state since the end of World War II, reality has become more complicated and civilian control of the military more tenuous. President Eisenhower warned:

We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence.. by the military-industrial complex... We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.

Elements of the military and the intelligence community, along with their Congressional and media allies, often test new presidents, and try to bend them to their will. It's increasingly evident that these elements are using Afghanistan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal to try to potty train President Obama to follow their advice to escalate in Afghanistan or face the dangerous political fallout of firing his own General for insubordination. President Obama must resist falling into either trap or he could put his very presidency in danger. If he escalates, he risks becoming LBJ, bogged down in an increasingly unwinnable and unpopular quagmire. If he's baited into firing McChrystal's, he risks becoming Harry Truman who fired his popular Korean War Commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur for insubordination, only to see his poll numbers plummet and his chances of reelection destroyed.

Some cautionary tales from recent history: The Bay of Pigs invasion was planned by the CIA before JFK took office and the new president was put under tremendous pressure to give the order for the disastrous invasion, a decision he quickly came to regret. But he also listened to his military advisors on Vietnam, increasing American commitments from 500 advisors to 16,000 troops before his assassination, proclaiming he had not become president "to see a war lost". Lyndon Johnson approved virtually every request from his generals for more troops, eventually sending over 500,000, and destroying his presidency.

Regardless of the Constitution, presidents resist even bad advice from their Generals at great peril to their political standing, and the Generals know this and often use this knowledge, in conjunction with conservative politicians, to bend presidents to their will. The historical example of President Truman and his popular Korean War commander General Douglas MacArthur weighs heavily on the mind of all presidents.

MacArthur wanted to use the American Air Force to bomb China. Truman rejected MacArthur's recommendation, fearing that bombing China would bring the nuclear-armed Soviet Union into the War and risk Armageddon. MacArthur tried to go around the president by leaking his conflict with Truman to the press through Republican Speaker of the House Cong. Joseph Martin. After consulting with his Secretary of State, former Gen. George Marshall, who said MacArthur's disrespect and defiance of the president should have gotten him fired 6 months earlier, President Truman relieved MacArthur of his command for insubordination. In light of MacArthur's flouting of the Constitution, it was the right decision and may have averted nuclear war, but it was also one of the least popular presidential decisions in American history, and may have cost Truman reelection. Truman's poll number plummeted. Robert Taft, the Republican leader in the Senate, called for Truman's impeachment, while the conservative media like the Chicago Tribune editorialized:

President Truman must be impeached and convicted, His hasty and vindictive removal of Gen. MacArthur is the culmination of acts which have shown that he is unfit, morally and mentally, for his high office.

In a recent article, lamenting President Obama's decisions to ratify many of George Bush's national security strategies, Gary Wills notes that

A president is greatly pressured to keep all the empire's secrets. He feels he must avoid embarrassing the hordes of agents, military personnel, and diplomatic instruments whose loyalty he must command. Keeping up morale in this vast, shady enterprise is something impressed on him by all manner of commitments.

According to Wills, nowhere is this pressure more relevant than in President Obama's decision last March:

to end the nation-building in Iraq, while substituting a long-term nation-building effort in Afghanistan, run by a government corrupted by drug trafficking and not susceptible to our remolding.

Now President Obama is reevaluating his Afghanistan strategy, while his commander there, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, is making MacArthur-like statements in public which border on insubordination, backed by vocal support from leading Republicans in Congress and the media. One has to wonder if elements of the military, backed by Republican neoconservatives, are trying to force President Obama to either ratify McChrystal's plans to escalate in Afghanistan, or fire McChrystal for insubordination, thus potentially facing Truman's fate and crippling his presidency.

Here's what McChrystal and his supporters have done so far:

• On Sunday, September, 20, President Obama blitzed the Sunday talk shows and made clear that he was conducting a high level reevaluation of his strategy in Afghanistan, telling CNN, for example, "I don't want to put the resource question [i.e. the number of troops] before the strategy question [e.g. counterrorism to disrupt Al Qaeda vs. nation building]. Because there is a natural inclination to say, if I get more, then I can do more. But...the first question is, are we doing the right thing?"

• Even before the president's statements, members of Gen. McChrystal's staff in Kabul and officers at the Pentagon were leaking anonymous threats to McClatchy Newspapers that McChrystal would resign if he didn't get the increased number of troops he was demanding from President Obama for. It's unlikely McChrystal's staff would be leaking to the press without his implicit or explicit permission, and perhaps the permission of McChrystal's boss, Gen. Petraeus (who is rumored to be considering a run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination), or even Petraeus' boss, Joint Chief of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen. In fact Mullen was already telling people on Capitol Hill that the US would "probably" be sending more troops.

• Just hours after Obama's interviews aired, Bob Woodward in the Washington Post was publishing a leaked copy of Gen. McChrystal's secret report to Defense Secretary Gates in which McChrystal called for a significant increase in troops (at least 40,000 according to another "leak" a few days later) and warned that if he didn't get them, the 8-year long war "will likely result in failure". It's apparent that insiders with access to the secret report were trying to force Obama's hand to escalate, or look like he was ignoring his commanders on the ground.

• Immediately leading Republicans backed McChrystal, calling for him to testify before Congress to make his case for escalation, bypassing the Pentagon chain of command and the president's authority as Commander in Chief. Republican Senator Kit Bond, vice chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, criticized the Obama administration for "not telling us what our forces need to succeed. The only way to do that is to let McChrystal testify, so that we know what we need to complete our mission." John McCain then announced he was introducing a bill in Congress for McChyrstal to testify. As retired senior military intelligence officer Col. Pat Lang noted, "this is actually an incitement to mutiny".

• The neocons immediately sprung into action. The day after McChrystal's report was leaked in The Washington Post, neocon consultants Fred and Kimberly Kagan delivered a "private" proposal for a 45,000 troop escalation this year, backed by the conservative American Enterprise Institute. The Kagan report, which "coincidentally" exactly recommended the same number of new troops McChyrstal was proposing, failed to mention that they were part of the team that drafted McChrystal's report. This was starting to look like a coordinated sneak attack on the administration's policy flexibility by neocons inside and outside of the military.

• Last week, McChrystal gave a public speech in London in which he rejected following any strategy but his own. When asked about Vice President Biden's suggestions that the focus be shifted from nation-building and propping up the Karzai regime to fighting Al Qaeda, McChrystal said it was a formula for "Chaos-istan". When asked if he would support such an alternative strategy to his own recommendations, he said "The short answer is: No." McChrystal clearly had no authority to be giving public speeches on policy. His answer probably crossed the line from implicit to explicit insubordination, all but inviting the president to fire him if the Commander in Chief didn't follow his recommendations. McChrystal must surely have been aware of the MacArthur/Truman history. As Bruce Ackerman wrote in a Washington Post column, McChrystal's London speech "is a plain violation of the principle of civilian control."

• In response, President Obama summoned McChrystal for a 25 minute meeting aboard Air Force I in Copenhagen. McChrystal showed up to meet the president in his field uniform, instead of his dress Greens. Col. Lang noted that his was a sign of disrespect, writing "the man does not seem to know his place". It's not clear what orders the Commander In Chief gave McChyristal.

This is starting to look like a case study of how the military-industrial complex potty trains new presidents to do their bidding. McChrystal, with support from others in the military command structure and from leading Republicans seem to be threatening Obama to either escalate the war or be forced to pull a MacArthur on McChrystal and fire him for insubordination, upon which the Republicans will turn McChrystal into a hero, accuse Obama of not listening to the generals on the ground and try to cripple his presidency. On the other hand, if Obama does follow McChrystal's advice and escalate in Afghanistan, he could be pulled into an unwinnable quagmire, as success remains unachievable, more Americans die, his poll numbers decline as an already skeptical public turns against the war, and Obama faces the fate of LBJ.

Fortunately, the military does not seem completely united behind McChrystal's escalation strategy. According to the New York Times, Colin Powell recently met with Obama and "expressed skepticism that more troops would guarantee success". Reportedly, Defense Secretary Gates, who is of course a holdover from the Bush administration, is undecided about McChrystal's troop requests. National Security Advisor, Gen. Jim Jones, the former Allied Supreme Commander in Europe, is also skeptical.

Gen. Jones went on the Sunday talk show circuit this weekend and adroitly tried to put McChrystal back in his place. Jones suggested that McChrystal's public campaign for his war strategy is complicating the White House review, saying "it is better for military advice to come through the chain of command". He also made it clear that McChrystal would no longer be permitted to present only one strategy option, stating, "I'm sure General McChrystal and General Petraeus and Admiral Mullen will be willing to present different options and different scenarios in this discussion that we're having. On CNN, Jones described McChrystal's recommendations as "his opinion" of what he thinks his role within that strategy is".

Moreover, unlike during the early days of the Korean War and the Vietnam War when a large majority of the public backed the war effort, recent polls show a majority of voters oppose escalation. So if Obama chooses a different strategy from McChrystal's, it won't as easy for Republicans to demonize Obama. Hopefully, he will also get some political cover from the likes of Gen. Jones, Gen. Powell and Secretary Gates.

Still, the McChrystal affair is a vivid reminder of the huge pressures powerful vested interests can place on a new president to protect the status quo and prevent meaningful change, whether in military matters, financial policy, climate change, or health care. The jury is still out on Afghanistan, but on domestic policy, I'm starting to worry that the banks, energy industry, insurance companies and big pharma may be winning the battle to define the limits "change".

 

Comments

[batguano]

The American right wing has for years sought to co-opt our military and it seems to be bearing fruit for them. An all-volunteer military is not representative of a democratic state & is prone to becoming a one-dimensional force. We should bring back the draft with the sons and daughters of the rich and powerful as well as average Americans as part. War is a very profitable enterprise for a few and policy makes all the difference which segment of the Military Industrial Complex will profit at any given time in any given conflict. The "War on Terror" is a product of 9/11 and that episode has not been fully examined by an impartial, fully empowered commission to sort fact from fiction. It seems to me that there are too many improbable coincidences associated with that day. The outcome has produced enormous power and profit for an elite few and our republic has suffered enormously and lost essential freedom IMO. Unless we turn from a military/police driven government and agenda and begin to return to a civilian priority agenda and representation, we will continue to suffer as a society and spend ourselves into poverty. Another aspect of this direction is military dictatorship that does not have to be a general in obvious command of America to be a reality; endless war policy and spending are equally dangerous to a civilian society. Profit at the expense of people is not strength or security, it is slavery.

[nicole473]

Extremely well said. Fanned.

[TJCole]

People should have been listening to the pronouncements of the Council on Foreign Relations they had their mouth pieces out a while back and laid out the program...

They want war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and Iran...maybe some actions in Somalia and Yemen too...kind of an assortment...

McChrystal was speaking before NATO and there is something to his pressing what he sees as needs in the theater of Afghanistan...

The increase is on it's a matter of politics and just how many he may not get 40,000 he may get 20-30,000 and we may increase the so called Contractors as well...

For my money all these generals are way over rated and most political generals remnants of the Bush regime...

These are the generals who allowed the worst blunder in American strategic and military history the invasion of Iraq, some even advocated it, others remained silent or passive for the sake of personal advancement...

Remember Sun Tzu said: "No nation has ever benefited from prolonged war..!"

"Of course the one thing history teaches, is that man learns nothing from history..!"

Hegel..

[nicole473]

""If he's baited into firing McChrystal's, he risks becoming Harry Truman who fired his popular Korean War Commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur for insubordination, only to see his poll numbers plummet and his chances of reelection destroyed."""

McChrystal is NOT "a popular" general. Nor is he anywhere close to as accomplished as MacArthur was.

Firing McChrystal might not be the best idea in the world, but a demotion or forced retirement would be in the best interests of Obama and this country.

[batguano]

There were a number of generals who were forced to retire under Bush, including William "Fox" Fallon, CENTCOM Chief. They were "fired", retired, demoted for telling the truth to power, and speaking out against mindless war, and they paid the price. For Obama to not respond to this blatant challenge to his authority and the chain of command would be a massive blunder; that is probably part of the thinking of the right-wing/war cabal. Obama must, IMO, turn our nation from a military/police agenda to a civilian priority agenda. Endless war in the Middle East does not benefit America, noe does it make us stronger or more secure; it benefits only a small sector and certain foreign interests that have outsized power and influence to subvert our foreign policy decisions; that must end.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JE31Df05.html

http://www.esquire.com/features/fox-fallon

[nicole473]

Thanks for the links and info, batguano. :)
I tend to agree with your assessment. I hope that Obama is thinking along the same lines.

[mergina]

Yep.

[hapiday]

"Republicans are already trying to destroy Obama using any means possible. My advice would be to ignore McChrystal, marginalize him as much as possible, give him orders he doesn't want to carry out, and let him resign. If he can't be a good soldier, screw him."

I agree! McChystal is a tool for the neo-cons. When McChystal showed up in fatigues to meet the president it was a sign of disrespect. McChystal will resign because he is not going to get what he wants and he will be marginalized.

[mergina]

You know, why should any of that come as a surprise? What dem president do they not try to make fail? It is our STUPID 2 PARTY SYSTEM. Us or them. They get in it's NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAHHHH NYAHHHHHHH. We get in it's NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAH NYAHHHH NYAHHHHHHH.

[jhamm1]

I don't think you've properly interpreted the context of McChrystal's assessment, in that an "all or nothing" synopsis might merely indicate nothing more than highlighting the unlikelihood for a victorious outcome, and if anything, maybe even attempting to pressure Obama towards a full-scale withdrawal.

[BlueFloyd]

you REALLY believe that? really?

[nicole473]

uh, NO.

[Steve Real]

General McChrystal may I remind you is President Obama's hand pick General.
He fired the other guy to replace him with McChrystal.
I think his comments are small potatos in the grand scheme of things.

As far as the Miltary Industrial Complex quote at the time President Eisenhower made that
comment (1959) we were spending roughly 10% of GDP on the military.
Today (2009) we are barely breaking 4.5% on the military industrial complex
It's less then half in real dollar of GDP terms,
since the dollar is worth less today then it was in 1959.
The title of this article is actually an economic head fake.

[jhamm1]

"Today (2009) we are barely breaking 4.5% on the military industrial complex."

Assuming that's even true (which I seriously doubt), that wouldn't change the fact that our current defense budget still outranks the combined annual defense expenditures of all other nations combined, and thus pursestrings to the defense budget should be further tightened, particularly in the face of the fact that we are not engaged in any kind of war, hot or cold.

[mergina]

Yeah, well he made a bad decision.

[nicole473]

No, he did not. He made a decision fully aware that he has no way of knowing how it will eventually play out.

[BlueFloyd]

the relative value of the dollar is irrelevant to your analysis. that same devalued dollar has to buy everything, including ammo and food and clothes. your percentages are worth a crunch, tho.

[BlueFloyd]

you might want to look at the denominator first: ie: how much is gdp now compared to back then?

Also, are you including ALL hidden military spending costs? The money spent on private contractors nee soldiers is much greater now than before. I bet you didnt include those numbers in your analysis.

[nicole473]

His leaks to the press of their differences is plain and simple, subordination by military law, to which McChrystal is bound. He should be fired. We can not afford high-ranking military officers taking matters in to their own hands. Had someone of a lower rank done the same thing, bypassing his superior officer, he would be court-martialed. Period.

Furthermore, although McChrystal was Obama's pick, as you say, what does that have to do with it? Obama has no way of knowing exactly how things will play out with anyone he hires, and he is not obliged/required to support someone simply because he hired him.

[nicole473]

Correction:

"subordination" should be "insubordination".

[WinterParkMom]

I never thought of McChrystal's going rogue in these terms. But how does the military suppliers establishment get to a commanding general in theatre?

And as a vet, I too thought it extremely strange and a huge sign of disrespect to his commander in chief to be wearing bdu's instead of dress greens for his commander. He would tolerate no less from a subordinate, so why do it to this President?

I would listen to Jim Jones and Gates and Powell before I'd listen to Patraeus and McChrystal, who both seem hell bent on sabotaging this President.

[DeWayne]

I am all for purging the incompitent general staff that Cheney strapped America with after purging the Pentagon general-staff of everyone with brains and real military expertise... pointing a finger deliberately at Iraq and Afghanistan.

I was particularly taken with the two general-idiots in Iraq being Betrayus and Bergner, who for month's chanted witin U$ Corp-Media news saying "We've got a stockpile of Iran weapons given to Iraq terrorist's to kill US Soldiers"... until a (real) military expert look at this crap, and said "none of this is from Iran"... and the two idiot's were not heard to say anything further about their (piles).

[WASanford]

The answer to the McChrystal problem is easy; McChrystal himself provided it. Simply adopt the Biden plan. McChrystal will resign leaving Obama to assign a less treasonous commander in the region. When the neocons complain about his choice they will make themselves easily identifiable as "warmongers."

This isn't North Korea, McChrystal isn't MacArthur, and Obama isn't Truman. On top of that WWII was a damned long time ago. Since then we’ve had North Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and now the American people are beginning to catch on that war is about making some of us rich at the expense of the rest of us. Had we listened to Major General Smedley Butler when he declared that “War Is a Racket;” we would have saved ourselves the agony those wars have inflicted on us.

[JXJASON]

Well said, WASanford.

I do not see any threat from the poor people in Afghanistan. We should bring all our troops home from Iraq, Afghanistan, Korea and Europe. Then we can cut the war budget.

The money saved can be used to increase border security, provide Medicare for all, increase the use of alternative energy and decrease the national debt.

The people who voted for President Obama are not a part of the "military-­industrial " complex.

The President is a smart man. He is not going to let any general shag him.

[tegrat]

Republicans are already trying to destroy Obama using any means possible. My advice would be to ignore McChrystal, marginalize him as much as possible, give him orders he doesn't want to carry out, and let him resign. If he can't be a good soldier, screw him.

[billyboil]

the 2 americas - the elected president, and the military, who keep you at war non-stop.
who will dominate?