The Tiresome Problem of Generals — Who Speak Out against the Evils of Unnecessary War, only after They Have Retired — General Stanley McChrystal Now Agrees that Drone Murder Is Bad — Yet, He apparently Didn’t Do Squat about it, even when He Was the Ranking Commander in Afghanistan — and a Comment about the Moral Implications of True Leadership

08 January 2013

The New American Way — powerful people who intentionally or inadvertently manufacture evil, then turn around (when convenient) to say that they didn’t really mean to do it

Here, for example, is General Stanley McChrystal’s post-retirement, apparently hypocritical (memoir promoting) statements about drones — from his enviable, but ethically undeserved position as a senior fellow and leadership teacher at Yale:

McChrystal, who authored the U.S. counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan, said use of drones had enabled him to carry out missions with smaller groups of special operations forces because the "eye in the sky" provided backup security.

"What scares me about drone strikes is how they are perceived around the world," he said in an interview.

"The resentment created by American use of unmanned strikes ... is much greater than the average American appreciates. They are hated on a visceral level, even by people who've never seen one or seen the effects of one."

McChrystal said the use of drones exacerbates a "perception of American arrogance that says, 'Well we can fly where we want, we can shoot where we want, because we can.'"

Drones should be used in the context of an overall strategy, he said, and if their use threatens the broader goals or creates more problems than it solves, then you have to ask whether they are the right tool.

“Well duh, Big Guy — where ya been?”

The moral and geopolitical policy elements surrounding serial drone murder are clear. They should be obvious to anyone, who even pretends to have an evanescent glimmer of ethical insight.

I have written about drone issues repeatedly:

here (drone murder’s disregard for established ethical boundaries of war)

here (paranoia, cowardice, drone killing, and ethically blighted leadership)

here (drone victims’ families and clans will remember)

here (special ops, perpetual war, and American hubris)

here (U.S. unconcern about drone killing contrasts with world opinion)

here (drone murder, Holocaust, and implications of collective guilt)

The self-serving corruption that near absolute Power brings with it

Commander in Chief Obama has killed many times more people with due process lacking drones than his once reviled predecessor, George W. Bush.

Yet, virtually not a peep from the Democrats, who so frequently and viciously attacked the former President.

General McChrystal, once in a position to object persuasively to the President’s drone killing program apparently did not. Now, perhaps to cleanse his legacy — and certainly to promote his memoir — he casually speaks out. Not on moral grounds, but simply on the basis of the idea that we might be engendering more rage than we can successfully quell.

Recall that General McChrystal is the same undeniably insubordinate general, who found it acceptable to belittle the civilian (and implicitly military) chain of command above him, while he served in Afghanistan.

Evidently McChrystal had the energy to cast aspersions on the competence of his chain of command, but did not have the spine to quarrel with them about collaterally murdering innocent people with (due process lacking) drones.

And apparently, General McChrystal is not an especially good geopolitical strategist, either

Watching Jon Stewart interview General McChrystal this evening (08 January), I noticed that the General equated:

(a) the diverse daily military challenges of World War II and the Marshall Plan that followed the War,

with

(b) those occurring today in Afghanistan,

as if to show that our day to day difficulties in Afghanistan may nevertheless have an equally good outcome in the future.

In making this comparison — and in telling three illustrative Afghanistan combat stories — the General, who was undoubtedly a superb special operations commander, does not appear to be (or have been) very cognizant of the historical, cultural, geographic, and geopolitical nuances that challenge creating intelligent military and geopolitical strategy in a wide variety of completely different situations.

Therefore, I can see why the Commander in Chief did not forgive him for his insubordination, as he might have if General McChrystal had been an outstandingly competent strategist in the Afghanistan theater.

The moral? — Should Yale be teaching “Expedient Immorality” under the guise of “Leadership”?

The world is over flowing with self-aggrandizing morally challenged people, who manufacture humanity’s equivalent of evil. We should not be teaching impressionable people to follow in their footsteps.

I have difficulty seeing General McChrystal, who furthered the drone killing policy on the grounds of military expedience — and who, now retired, cautions against it — as a suitable teacher of America’s future leaders. It is often easy to do the “right thing,” after the opportunity to be effective doing it has passed.

Of course, in today’s America, the System is all about the perpetual re-circulation of our Morally Questionable Finest from one position of authority to another.

PeteFree.com