What McChrystal’s Firing Says about American Values By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

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What McChrystal’s Firing Says about American Values By Rabbi Shmuley Boteach

It seems I’m one of the few Americans who was appalled at the firing of General Stanley McChrystal. In a rare moment of unity, pundits on both the left and right supported the President relieving the general of command. The arguments were uniform (no pun intended). If the President had not fired McChrystal it would have eroded civilian authority over the military. McChrystal’s comments showed a lack of professionalism and conduct unbecoming an officer. He insulted our allies, etc, etc.

But put aside the hysteria and think soberly for a moment. What was
McChrystal guilty of? Insubordination? This wasn’t General Douglas MacArthur
who publicly and willfully criticized President Truman’s preparedness to accept
a partitioned Korea. MacArthur was also a public advocate for going to war with
China. This was rank insubordination on the part of a commander who was an
American hero but who had, perhaps because he had served as viceroy of Japan
for half a decade, grown a little too big for his britches and needed to be
taught who was boss. Not so McChrystal who was the architect of a policy wholly
endorsed by President Obama and never once challenged the orders of his
Commander-in-Chief either in public or even in the Rolling Stone article.

But wasn’t he guilty of stupidity and mouthing off in front of a
journalist?

Perhaps. But how media savvy do you expect a general who for years has
been running the blackest of black opps to be? We train these men to hunt down
the most dangerous murderers in the world, not to be experts in PR. Of
necessity they’re going to be the kind of people who buck authority just a
little. And if they do so in the privacy of a military bull session, who cares?
Guys like McChrystal deal with a level of pressure that we civilians,
surrounded by our plasma TV screens in our air-conditioned homes, can scarcely
understand.

McChrystal’s error was to blow off steam and allow his subordinates to
grumble about their civilians overlords – which one assumes is pretty standard
fare in military circles – in the presence of a journalist. But anyone who has
ever been the subject of a lengthy magazine profile, where a reporter follows
you around for weeks, knows how easy it is to simply forget they’re there, or
that off-the-cuff remarks are on the record, especially when you have a million
more important things to worry about.

Vice President Biden is known to be gaff-prone and recently dropped
the F-Bomb into a live microphone at Obama’s signing of the health care bill.
Politicians are human. So are Generals, as are their staff. But you don’t
destroy the career and reputation of a hero officer who has served his country
valiantly for three decades because a journalist decides to publish the private
banter of decorated soldiers who have never challenged the civilian authority
in any meaningful way.

And why should I care about McChrystal? It’s not the general that is
mostly on my mind, but American values.

President Obama said that he had to fire the general to bolster
civilian control over the military, which conjured up images of McChrystal
poised to cross the Rubicon and storm Washington in true Julius Caesar style.
But the president, who loves teachable moments, could have used the incident to
teach the American people about the importance of gratitude, a value sorely
lacking in our democracy. He could have told the country that McChrystal screwed
up. A general has to be measured and in control. But given the fact that this
was just a silly magazine article and the country owed McChrystal a tremendous
debt of gratitude for three decades of service – especially as head of the Joint Special
Operations Command, which captured Saddam Hussein and killed
Al-Qaeda Iraq head Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi, he was going to overlook the incident and accept the
general’s public apology.

Wall Street bankers who may never have sacrificed anything for their
country were given multi-billion dollar bailouts by the government when they,
propelled by greed rather than patriotism, messed up. But McChrystal, who will
make a fraction in his entire career of what a Wall Street investment can make
in a year, was thrown to the wolves for saying things like he didn’t want to
read Richard Holbrooke’s emails.

Oh, but the war is bigger than any one individual, the President said.
True. But so are American values.

Gratitude is a dying virtue in American society. We continue to live
free only because of our brave military, yet most Americans offer empty words
of support to our troops that are rarely backed by tangible action. This is a
shame, given how much criticism the militaries of democracies receive because
of tragic civilian casualties that are unavoidable when fighting terrorists who
use kindergartens and hospitals as bases of operation. In this past Sunday’s
New York Times Thomas Friedman came awfully close to a blood libel when he
wrote of the “brutality of Israel’s retaliations” against Hezbollah and Hamas
and how Israel “chose to go after them without being deterred by the prospect
of civilian casualties.” Irresponsible words like these betray contempt for the
challenges commanders of Western armies face when fighting terrorists who both
murder innocent civilians and also use them as human shields.

But it’s not just in military situations where gratitude is lacking in
our culture. It is also dying in marriage, with more and more men and women
refusing to stay in relationships where they don’t feel appreciated. Gratitude
is an increasingly rare commodity in the parent-child bond with more youth
feeling a sense of entitlement and more parents feeling like they are glorified
ATM’s. Neither do employees in today’s economy feel appreciated as they are
laid off in record number by companies who often put profits before people.

But gratitude is also lacking in today’s media, which is often
prepared to exploit human error to bolster circulation and ratings. Michael
Hastings could have showed some gratitude toward a general who trusted him,
took him into his confidence, and gave him unique access to his challenges
fighting the murderous Taliban in Afghanistan, including his occasional
frustrations with his civilian superiors. Instead his revelations will ensure
that public officials trust journalists even less then they do already, making
our newspapers and magazines, which are already on life support, blander and
more colorless.

post a comment

lori l. marcus

posted June 28, 2010 at 12:33 pm

Hey, Shmuely,
How about the lack of gratitude you displayed toward Rebbe Schneerson, when you disobeyed his directive to disband the personality cult – yours- which you established at Oxford?

Joan Ball

posted June 28, 2010 at 12:58 pm

Your piece is thought-provoking and spurred a question in my mind: does intention matter. If, as you say, this was a gaff. An oversight on the part of hard-working military men and women who said to much in front of the wrong person I might respond in one way (if I were Obama, of course). If, however, this was an intentional use/manipulation of the media to further personal ends (air dirty laundry in the public sphere to further ends that the chain of command disallowed) I might respond in another. Having not been in the room with Obama and McChrystal when the president spoke with him about the incident, it is hard for me to decide how he should have responded. Did McCrystal express regret and say it was a mistake? Did he thumb his nose at the president? We may never really know. Does it matter? That’s an interesting question to contemplate…

posted June 28, 2010 at 1:05 pm

Rabbi–Please stick to Judaism.
Pres. Obama fired the general for two reasons: 1) This is the 2nd time that the big mouthed general mouthed off publicly about Obama and his administration. The first time occurred at the beginning of the Obama administration. His first public mouthing off caused Obama to have the big mouthed general fly from Afghanistan to London for a meeting on the tarmac in Air Force One. The President let him off that time with a warning. The big mouthed general’s most recent mouthing off was a “second offense”. As the big mouthed general’s conduct in the Pat Tillman cover up showed, he has a tendency to think he is more important than he really is. He got the heave-ho this time because Obama needed to show the big mouthed general that he is not as important than his own inflated ego causes him to think.
2) It was also a warning from Obama to his Afghanistan advisors to get their act together and start rowing in the same direction. There may be more firings in the future.

Henrietta22

posted June 28, 2010 at 1:22 pm

A General knows the protocol to follow even if he is falling apart doing his part in any war. He was indiscreet to say what he did, a General doesn’t do this. He wanted what he said to be in Rolling Stone so it would reach the young officers, that was the audience he wanted. This was wrong. All the reasons given for accepting his resignation by the President were right on. He is an intelligent man and maybe he’ll run for office like so many dismissed Generals in the past did, although they didn’t make it.

Father Doneau

posted June 29, 2010 at 7:29 am

Dear Rabbi, you miss the point entirely. What General McChrystal did was a criminal offense according to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, the set of laws that govern the military. Civilian law does not apply. First Amendment protections do not apply. Surely you are not advocating criminal activity? The UCMJ governs here. He indeed commiited insubordination, he knew what he was doing and he was aware of the possible consequences. End of story.

Abambagibus

posted June 30, 2010 at 11:07 am

Against the probability of ‘eroding civilian authority over the military’, the President chose rather to enhance the erosion of American military morale. Of course, civilians who have never served in the military sense of the verb tend to look at service personnel as servants of lesser status anyway. So what do they care about military morale? When infected by the virus of historical ignorance and lack of care, history is condemned to eventually repeat itself. And, except for the prudently wary few, most don’t give a rat’s behind.

Bonnie

posted June 30, 2010 at 10:45 pm

Father Doneau hit the nail on the head and obviously is very familiar with what the Uniform Code of Military Justice means. General McChrystal, intentionally or not, mocked the President (his Commander-in-Chief, by the way)and the VP in the interview. What kind of leadership does this demonstrate when a senior officer shows such disrespect? Maybe the news service also showed its indiscretion by taking the General’s remarks out of context. We’ll never know what the correspondent heard as opposed to what was written, but the General should have been well aware he was under the microscope the entire time, given his time in service and vast experience with the news media and its tendency to skew words and facts.

Dr. W. L Goff

posted June 30, 2010 at 10:56 pm

Thomas Friedmans words in his article were very responsible and accurate. I fully support Israel’s right to exist and to defend itself. But I don’t support it’s callous action against Gaza.

MRSHMR

posted July 1, 2010 at 10:50 am

General McChrystal resigned from that position. He is still a general in the US army. It is the soldiers who worked under him that really spoke out of line. All military as well as military families know they need to be careful of what they say. We all know it is even more important to be cautious around reporters.
General McChrystal will be just fine.

posted July 2, 2010 at 12:48 pm

Rabbi, I always find your thoughts interesting and insightful, even when I don’t agree with them. Whether Gen. M. was doing something against the UCMJ, I can’t comment as I don’t know the code. What does seem clear is that Pres. Obama used this teaching moment as more of a political opportunity than as a way to bring the country together (by whatever decision he made) to support a war that the vast majority of Americans are not invested in. Of course, Pres. Obama has his own stew of problems that he and the Admin. are working to sort out and fix.
From his comments, we can say that Mr. Freidman is either a throwback (i.e., yet another in a long line of self hating Jews) or despite his obvious brilliance (which is neat to see on paper or on TV) in many areas of thought he has somehow missed the actions originating in Gaza that are the cause to the effect. Or perhaps he has finally caught the “New York Times disease” of being for anything that is against Israel. (Yet another reason for me to cancel my subscription.)
For those who may be a bit unfamiliar, war conducted as a terrorist campaign makes it difficult if not impossible to tell who the players are on the terrorist side. Of course, this is intentional on the part of the terrorists as it makes it easier for them to attack (they look and act like the civilians) and to fade back into the background (they look and act like the civilians). And, they put fear into the locals as they know “they” could be next if they say anything to the authorities. Further, terrorists break the rules of “normal” warfare; i.e., they get to attack from sources of safety (churches, mosques, hospitals, etc.) that regular soldiers can not and do not do. And, they get to use as shields women, children, babies and the elderly – something a regular soldier would be courtmartialed for doing. You may have noted these and other tools used by terrorists were/are sources of frustration for our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. They are using and coping with the restricted Rules of Engagement, and they will tell you it is really tough.
Any time any person is killed in any fight it is terrible. It is all the more terrible and tragic when that person(s) is/are civilians. While I think the IDF is doing a great job of protecting Israel in as moral, ethical and honorable ways as possible, it is likely even they have made a few mistakes. I suggest we use our influence (Mr. Freidman has 1 gazillion times more than me for example, but I do have some) to work with Israel to be even more thoughtful, prudent, moral and ethical in their policies and in their actions. I think we can do this by talking with or writing to our members of Congress urging them to support Israel in their struggle, while at the same time maintaining the highest standards of morals, ethics, honor and integrity in their policies and in their actions. (maybe some of that will rub off on our members of Congress, heh?) And, I think we do our best work by keeping the tone and substance of our discussions above the brutal and violent tone and word of Israel’s opponents. While they need no ammunition, when the “need” arises they will make something, anything, up; I see no need to give them gasoline.
Let’s keep working for democracy and fairness in all societys all over the world and we will see more positive differences in each of those society’s in a fairly short time period. One important result will be the concern/hatred/disgust people in Arab countries used to waste on Israel, they can utilize to create their own business, expand an existing business, go to trade school or university, get married and have children, build their own house, and many, many other results that will help the individual, his/her family, the community and the country.