Defending McChrystal

There have been quite a few op-eds that have come out saying that McChrystal should just "shut up and salute" and not make his opinions public, especially when it embarrasses Obama. It seems to me that the people who write this have no concept of the fact that American lives are at stake here. This isn't some undersecretary of Health and Human Services having an issue with a public housing bill. This is a General who leads Americans into battle. He should be allowed, by the nature of his job, some leeway on protocol. And honestly, given that he has had almost no time to actually speak to the President, it is pretty clear he felt like he was being brushed aside and ignored. So I really don't see how anyone can blame him for speaking up in public. Michael O'Hanlon from Brookings has a pretty nice defense of the General today in the WaPo:

Some might agree with all this yet say that McChrystal still had no business wading into policy waters at this moment. It is true that commanders, as a rule, should not do so. But when truly bad ideas or those already tried and discredited are debated as serious proposals, they do not deserve intellectual sanctuary. McChrystal is personally responsible for the lives of 100,000 NATO troops who are suffering severe losses partially as a result of eight years of a failed counterterrorism strategy under a different name. He has a right to speak if a policy debate becomes too removed from reality. Put another way, we need to hear from him because he understands this reality far better than most in Washington.

Many of those criticizing McChrystal wish, in retrospect, that our military command in 2002-03 had been more vocal in opposing Donald Rumsfeld's planning for the Iraq invasion that assumed a minimal need for post-invasion stabilization forces. This was an unusually bad idea that military leadership went along with, at least publicly, partly out of a sense that they had no prerogative to intercede. The result was one of the most botched operations in U.S. military history until the 2007 surge partially salvaged things.