Kabul: Like his boss, mentor and friend, Gen. David H. Petraeus, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal modeled himself as one of a new breed of American commanders: intellectual, open with the press and as politically savvy as the elected officials he was hired to serve.
In that respect, the two four-star generals -- Petraeus in Iraq, McChrystal in Afghanistan -- personified the modern conviction that America's commanders had to sell their strategies as much as prosecute them.
And so they did. General Petraeus became the public face of President George W. Bush's counteroffensive in Iraq in 2007, while General McChrystal, in trying to salvage the war in Afghanistan, threw open his headquarters to the press and the public in a way unimaginable to a generation of generals before him.
But with a handful of intemperate remarks by him and his aides to a magazine writer, General McChrystal demonstrated the perils of letting the public see too much of its commanders at war -- and of his own shortfalls as the manager of his public image.
In that respect, the two four-star generals -- Petraeus in Iraq, McChrystal in Afghanistan -- personified the modern conviction that America's commanders had to sell their strategies as much as prosecute them.
And so they did. General Petraeus became the public face of President George W. Bush's counteroffensive in Iraq in 2007, while General McChrystal, in trying to salvage the war in Afghanistan, threw open his headquarters to the press and the public in a way unimaginable to a generation of generals before him.
But with a handful of intemperate remarks by him and his aides to a magazine writer, General McChrystal demonstrated the perils of letting the public see too much of its commanders at war -- and of his own shortfalls as the manager of his public image.
General McChrystal, a gaunt, driven 55-year-old, seemed an unlikely candidate when President Obama appointed him the commanding general of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan almost a year ago to the day.
Although America's post-Sept. 11 wars have created a number of famous generals, like General Petraeus, General McChrystal spent much of his career in the Army's cloak-and-dagger special operations units.
For five years, from the early months of the Iraq war until the troop increase ended in 2008, General McChrystal ran the Joint Special Operations Command, the armed service's most secretive branch of commandos. His job was to kill terrorists, and stay quiet about it.
On arriving in Afghanistan, General McChrystal adopted a policy of accessibility especially remarkable for a man whose career was steeped in secrecy, inviting reporters to join him in classified briefings and on trips around the country.
Like General Petraeus, who has a Ph.D. from Princeton, General McChrystal, a fellow at both Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations, he brought a formidable intellect to the elusive complexities of Afghan tribal and ethnic politics. And he labored to explain the rationale -- through the press to a public increasingly weary of war and skeptical of the effort in Afghanistan -- behind his strategy based on counterinsurgency.
He emphasized the need to win over the Afghan public and focus the fighting on the Taliban heartland in the south. He withdrew troops from peripheral areas and publicly announced military operations well before they began.
"In the Army in particular, there has developed a sophisticated understanding of civil-military relations," said Richard H. Kohn, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "I think more and more senior officers have grown up recognizing the importance of having to communicate to the American people through the American media."
Indeed, like that of General Petraeus before him, General McChrystal's public-friendly style was linked directly to the prospects of success in the field. In Iraq, General Petraeus saved the American project from catastrophe less by killing insurgents than by embracing and protecting the Iraqi public.
General McChrystal tried to do the same, telling his troops wherever he went that killing Taliban insurgents carried costs, often in the form of dead civilians, that seldom justified using overwhelming force.
He issued directives ordering his troops to drive their tanks and Humvees with courtesy, and he made it more difficult to call in airstrikes to kill insurgents because they risked civilian casualties. When his troops killed women and children, General McChrystal often apologized directly to President Hamid Karzai and to the Afghan people.
But in making derisive remarks about members of the Obama administration to Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, General McChrystal went well past acceptable candor and into the realm of political hazard.
Exactly why he and his officers chose to let fly in such uncontrolled fashion in front of a reporter is hard to know. It is possible that they had become so accustomed to having reporters around that they forgot one of them was there.
And that, perhaps, is a measure of the difference between General McChrystal and his mentor. It is impossible to imagine General Petraeus uttering the same things or letting down his guard to do so. For if there is one rule by the which the new breed of generals live, it is that candor is good, but not too much.
Although America's post-Sept. 11 wars have created a number of famous generals, like General Petraeus, General McChrystal spent much of his career in the Army's cloak-and-dagger special operations units.
For five years, from the early months of the Iraq war until the troop increase ended in 2008, General McChrystal ran the Joint Special Operations Command, the armed service's most secretive branch of commandos. His job was to kill terrorists, and stay quiet about it.
On arriving in Afghanistan, General McChrystal adopted a policy of accessibility especially remarkable for a man whose career was steeped in secrecy, inviting reporters to join him in classified briefings and on trips around the country.
Like General Petraeus, who has a Ph.D. from Princeton, General McChrystal, a fellow at both Harvard University and the Council on Foreign Relations, he brought a formidable intellect to the elusive complexities of Afghan tribal and ethnic politics. And he labored to explain the rationale -- through the press to a public increasingly weary of war and skeptical of the effort in Afghanistan -- behind his strategy based on counterinsurgency.
He emphasized the need to win over the Afghan public and focus the fighting on the Taliban heartland in the south. He withdrew troops from peripheral areas and publicly announced military operations well before they began.
"In the Army in particular, there has developed a sophisticated understanding of civil-military relations," said Richard H. Kohn, a history professor at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "I think more and more senior officers have grown up recognizing the importance of having to communicate to the American people through the American media."
Indeed, like that of General Petraeus before him, General McChrystal's public-friendly style was linked directly to the prospects of success in the field. In Iraq, General Petraeus saved the American project from catastrophe less by killing insurgents than by embracing and protecting the Iraqi public.
General McChrystal tried to do the same, telling his troops wherever he went that killing Taliban insurgents carried costs, often in the form of dead civilians, that seldom justified using overwhelming force.
He issued directives ordering his troops to drive their tanks and Humvees with courtesy, and he made it more difficult to call in airstrikes to kill insurgents because they risked civilian casualties. When his troops killed women and children, General McChrystal often apologized directly to President Hamid Karzai and to the Afghan people.
But in making derisive remarks about members of the Obama administration to Michael Hastings of Rolling Stone, General McChrystal went well past acceptable candor and into the realm of political hazard.
Exactly why he and his officers chose to let fly in such uncontrolled fashion in front of a reporter is hard to know. It is possible that they had become so accustomed to having reporters around that they forgot one of them was there.
And that, perhaps, is a measure of the difference between General McChrystal and his mentor. It is impossible to imagine General Petraeus uttering the same things or letting down his guard to do so. For if there is one rule by the which the new breed of generals live, it is that candor is good, but not too much.
Story first published:
June 23, 2010 09:04 IST
