Curmudgeon's Corner
cur-mud-geon: anyone who hates hypocrisy and pretense and has the temerity to say so; anyone with the habit of pointing out unpleasant facts in an engaging and humorous manner
Retention or Resignation?
Gen. McChrystal meets with President Obama this morning and may or may not emerge from that meeting with his command intact.
The press is, of course, speculating as to whether he ought to be kept in that position or removed from that position. They, too, ponder just how the President ought to handle this ticklish situation in order to save face. He could be damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t…and that seems the most important part of this situation from the perspective of the mainstream media.
Gen. McChrystal made his bed and likely is prepared to lie in that bed. He knew that the Rolling Stone article was likely to use the most damning of the comments and innuendo to get the maximum level of readership possible. Generals are very much political animals; they know how to use politics almost as well as do the politicians. If they hadn’t mastered politics 101, they would simply not be Generals. After the rank of Major, the cut rate increases almost exponentially for promotion to each succeeding rank. Fewer Majors make it to Lt. Colonel than did Captains make it to Major. Likewise, fewer at the level of Lt. Colonel make it to full Colonel, and so on.
A four-star General is rare and this one knew what he was doing.
He had to have felt that his role would become that of having failed in the next campaign in
So, what was his reason for doing this? Was he trying to embarrass the President? Was he trying to bring the attention of Americans to this topic? Was he trying to get Congress to wade in?
If he wanted out, he could’ve simply tendered his resignation. There is more to this than we know or understand at this point.
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