This article all but shout out the lack of judgment/discretion on his—and far more materially his staff—but military officers saying rude things about their civilian overlords? How different is this in substance from what employees are likely to say about hard-ass/blowhard bosses in any firm? I say they make up, and McChrystal goes back to Afghanistan; it’s what he wants to do.
Sorry, I’ll get back to Japan later in the week..
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"How different is this in substance from what employees are likely to say about hard-ass/blowhard bosses in any firm?"
If the employee is the head of a major business division, and if the manager is talking about infighting and incompetence of the CEO and his general staff in a WSJ article, then that company would likely not even take a full two days to throw the guy to the curb.
I'd had been very surprised had he got to stay on. I guess part of the reason it took several days and a trip to the capital was to make it blindingly obvious to any other would-be media commentators that retribution would be drawn out, publicly humiliating and irrevocably career-killing.
Comments cited in the article sound like childish teen-age boy stuff, and in a company some degree of this kind of grousing and foolishness around the water cooler or in front of a beer is tolerated and maybe even natural. But there is an important American bi-partisan principle at work here: the military is subservient to the civilian government (several articles have already recalled, for those of us not old enough to remember, the Truman-MacArthur fisaco). This is pretty key. At least some Americans (like me) want the military in the barracks, and just in the barracks, unless they choose to run for office and succeed. McChrystal seems to have temporarily forgotten this, quickly realized his error, and turned to toast. No surprise.
Your points are well taken, Janne and William. And in retrospect, I see that the availability of Petraeus clinches the deal. I think that there’s a real difference between the two Macs though. MacArthur challenged policy while McChrystal challenged competence.
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