Team Effort

by George Packer
July 5, 2010
The New Yorker

In firing General Stanley McChrystal for talking cocky mess-hall trash about his civilian superiors in the company of aides and a writer for Rolling Stone, President Obama reasserted the principle of civilian control of the military. In getting General David Petraeus, the most talented officer of his generation, to accept McChrystal’s command, the President deftly solved his crisis of generalship, which threatened to undermine the mission in Afghanistan. The three-day personnel problem ended as well as the White House could have wanted, but, because it’s a symptom of the larger problem of the war, the McChrystal uproar is going to resonate long after sniping about the old soldier—and about Vice-President “Bite Me”—has faded away.

Every aspect of the war—which is approaching its tenth year, having just superseded Vietnam as the longest in American history—is going badly. Team McChrystal’s casual insubordination reflected a war effort working against itself. McChrystal and Karl Eikenberry, the American Ambassador in Kabul, disliked each other and fought over strategy through cables and leaks. (Eikenberry didn’t think that the addition of tens of thousands of troops could succeed.) Obama allowed the division to fester, giving President Hamid Karzai an opening in which to play American officials off against one another: McChrystal was Karzai’s newest friend, Eikenberry his latest enemy. Richard Holbrooke, the Administration’s special representative for the region, lost Karzai’s confidence a while ago, and it’s not clear that he still has Obama’s. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates remain closely allied with each other, their subordinates, and the White House, but wars are won or lost in the field, not at headquarters.

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