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The Rolling Stone Article's Juiciest
Bits<http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/06/the-rolling-stone-articles-juiciest-bits/58503/>
POLITICS <http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/> JUN 22 2010, 8:23 AM
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Read the full Rolling Stone article
here<http://www.politico.com/static/PPM130_r1109mcchrystal.html>
.

Here are the most interesting paragraphs:

"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides. "Some French
minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay."


Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander
in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered
Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen
senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank.
According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama
looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass.
Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months
later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go
much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal.
"Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy
who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The
Boss was pretty disappointed."


Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know
that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going
to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. "It's not going to look like
a win, smell like a win or taste like a win," says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville,
who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. "This is going to end in
an argument."


At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry.
"Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke," he groans. "I don't even want to
open it." He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then
stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his
annoyance. "Make sure you don't get any of that on your leg," an aide jokes,
referring to the e-mail.


This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal's counterinsurgency
strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of
whatever tin-pot leader we've backed - a danger that Eikenberry explicitly
warned about in his cable. Even Team McChrystal privately acknowledges that
Karzai is a less than-ideal partner. "He's been locked up in his palace the
past year," laments one of the general's top advisers. At times, Karzai
himself has actively undermined McChrystal's desire to put him in
charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed my Medical Center, Karzai met
three U.S. soldiers who had been wounded in Uruzgan province. "General," he
called out to McChrystal, "I didn't even know we were fighting in Uruzgan!"


It doesn't hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of
the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the
government's darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and
captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader
of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "JSOC was a killing machine," says Maj. Gen. Mayville,
his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He
systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific
insurgents and hunting them down -- often with the help of cyberfreaks
traditionally shunned by the military. "The Boss would find the 24-year-old
kid with a nose ring, with some fucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting
in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming," says a Special Forces
commando who worked with
McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. "He'd say, 'Hey --
you fucking
muscleheads couldn't find lunch without help. You got to work together
with these guys.'"


But however strategic they may be, McChrystal's new marching orders have
caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their
fire,
soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?" says a former
Special
Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love
to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers' lives
in even
greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing."

--
Eric D. Schwerin
Rosemont Seneca Partners
(202) 333-1880
eschwerin@rosemontseneca.co