General McChrystal's Unsellable War and President Obama's Fury

While I have been gallavanting around Europe and becoming cultured, e.g., eating croissants and drinking espresso on the Champs-Élysées, I have been missing out on some incredibly political misadventures back in the "States."  First and foremost: the resignation of General McChrystal from the ISAF in Afghanistan.

Wow.  Forget the general's role in the whole Pat Tillman cover-up, he gets brought down by opening his mouth to a reporter during a boozy bus ride from Paris to Berlin, all thanks to that pesky Icelandic volcano.  (Eyjafjallajokull should be the new honorary "El Nino.") Though General McChrystal was, at least, an entertaining guy, his ouster was necessary if only to ensure some sort of superficial civilian control of our $700 billion-per-year military. 

I think the most damning thing in Michael Hastings' expose is this somber paragraph about how hopeless Afghanistan has become:

When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose. "Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan," he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."

And yet we soldier on.  After all, General Petraeus solved Iraq, right?  I can only dream that Admiral Stavridis were talking this Friday rather than three weeks ago...

In other absurd news, while journalism whilst abroad appears to have single-handedly taken down General McChrystal, journalism at home is getting nowhere covering the BP Gulf spill. Mac McClelland at MotherJones has a pretty depressing summary of how BP and local officials are harassing journalists even after the White House got involved.

I suppose the President's "fury" only really kicks into gear when his generals talk to journalists, not when private corporations destroying America attempt to beat journalists into submission?