Saturday, November 21, 2009

Should Obama Fire Gen. McChrystal?


by Ray McGovern, November 21, 2009

"It is not too late for President Barack Obama to follow the example of Harry Truman, who fired the famous Gen. Douglas MacArthur in 1951 for insubordination. Then, as now, the stakes were high. Then it was Korea; now it is Afghanistan.

In my view, Obama should fire Gen. Stanley McChrystal.

In that showdown nearly six decades ago, President Truman and his advisers were preparing to engage North Korea and China in peace negotiations when MacArthur, commander of the U.N. forces in Korea, issued an unauthorized statement containing a veiled threat to expand the war into China......

The future expectation would be that when the chips are down, Obama won’t be a Truman or a Kennedy, both of whom had the guts to face down the Pentagon by rebuffing military demands for wider wars.

It would be hard to write a Profile in Courage for one who bowed as low to his opinionated — but myopic — generals, as he did, physically, to the Japanese emperor, de rigueur, last Saturday......."

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