Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Fallon, Mullen, McChrystal

Bad things come in threes ... and so do lessons.

I expand on that thought over at
USNIBlog.

7 comments:

DeltaBravo said...

Hahahaha.   Brilliant comparison between journalists and the dog waiting for cheese toast.  :-D

Rasta said...

A few of the officers were discussing the RS article. M4 is too smart to not realize this would get out. The concurrence is that this was planned as an excuse to jump ship before it sinks. Afghanistan is a complete and utter failure...and McChrystal knows this. Better to get fired for outlandish remarks then for losing the war...instead of being the General Who Lost the War, he will be just a few chapters in that book. Smart move to get out of this quagmire...

Andrewdb said...

Excellant.

GIMP said...

Maybe the General is too smart for this to happen accidentally.  Maybe not.  Recent history is replete with examples of people whom we mistakedly assume are "really smart" based on supremely well filled out academic records and resumes turning out to be "not smart at all."  See the bankers on Wall Street, those brilliant Ivy Leaguers who couldn't figure out how to keep going concerns running without being bailed out.  The list goes on and on.  Most people are average, even those who rise to the highest positions.

GIMP said...

Thankfully the General in charge of this abysmal effort is gone.  Unfortunately the wrongheaded policy will remain in effect.  Afghanistan, its government and people are tangential to the overall fight against terrorists.  We are likely to lose in Afghanistan, but even success would bring little value relative to cost.  This fight should be led by the CIA, not DoD.  We need to hunt terrorists the world over and kill them, not build a stable Afghanistan.  We need to eliminate the threat, which is the terrorist, and we need to do it by killing them, period.  Get conventional troops out of Afghanistan, put the CIA in charge, chop special forcers to the CIA, hunt terrorists without regard to borders, kill them, repeat as often as necessary.  I guess "the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history" (Friedrich Hegel).

ShawnP said...

So who's taking over as CENTCOM? Petraus is very, very good but that's too big a dual hatted role for anyone. Plus being one's own boss isn't the smartest thing if you ask.

Kristen said...

That's a good piece, CDR.  I've seen your links to USNI before, but never followed one because I assumed it was going to be a more technical site that wouldn't interest me.  When I followed URR's link from the other McChrytal post, I liked it a lot.  I'll definitely bookmark the site.