It was a no-win situation. You can either sack the man who’s at the core of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, or you can leave in place a person who loudly and publicly shat all over the civilian chain of command at a time when the rift between Washington and Arlington is as troubling as it’s been in decades. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. So how to resolve it?
My first job out of college, I was lucky to have a boss who turned out to be one of the best friends I’d ever had. And the relationship was simple: he would keep the shit-avalanche of upper management off me, so long as I didn’t do anything to make said shit-avalanche worse. Basically, we had to trust each other – me that he was fighting in my best interests, and him that I wouldn’t do anything to screw him.
That’s the tiebreaker. The general forced the President into having to choose between the options above – and the tiebreaker is that the President was forced to make a choice at all. I realize that the only parts of the Constitution that Republicans care about are the Second Amendment and Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1. And I realize that the national news media is pussywhipped into believing that the President is the Commander-in-Chief of everything in the country, except the military. But the only thing the President is actually commander-in-chief of is the military. Key phrased being “commander” and “in chief.”
You want to question the strategy? You want to throw stones? You want to be a big-baller in the fashion of LeMay and MacArthur and McClellan? Resign. Write a book. Get a regular gig as a Fox News blowjob recipient. But as long as you’re active-duty military, the only answer you have to the President of the United States, for anything at all, is “SIR YES SIR!” Because that’s how the system is set up, that’s how it’s been set up since 1787, and it’s worked out pretty well so far. People can piss and moan, but it kept nukes out of Vietnam, and it kept us out of a land war with China, so I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt.
Because when you make your manager’s life a greater misery, you’re a liability.