Mentor Says McChrystal Is ‘Crushed’ by the Change in His Circumstances

By ELISABETH BUMILLER
NYT

WASHINGTON — The White House sent a powerful signal this week by permitting Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal to retire with all of his four stars, but the general’s most important mentor, Adm. Mike Mullen, still described him as “crushed” during the shock of a transition from commanding nearly 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan to living in exile on the Potomac.

By the time Gen. David H. Petraeus bustled into General McChrystal’s old quarters at the international military headquarters in the heart of Kabul, the Afghan capital, on Friday, General McChrystal had retreated to his home at Fort McNair, the quiet, two-century-old Army post built on a point of land where the Potomac and Anacostia Rivers meet. Colleagues said that General McChrystal’s overnight metamorphosis from the nation’s most important general to its most humiliated was numbing, but that he would recover psychologically and survive professionally.

“In time he will put this in perspective because of the contribution he has made to this country, and I think he will at some point make peace with himself,” said Gen. Jack Keane, the retired vice chief of staff of the Army, who has been in touch by e-mail with General McChrystal. “I suspect he’s thinking he let everybody down, he let his troops down, he let his team down, he let the chain of command down.”

Admiral Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, visited General McChrystal at Fort McNair the day he was dismissed by the president, and later told military officials in Kabul that the general and his wife, Annie, were “crushed” by the turn of events. But Admiral Mullen told the officers he believed that the McChrystals would be able to move on.

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