McChrystal Request to Reach Pentagon by End of the Week-W.P.

In today’s Washington Post there is an article concerning General McChrystal’s report on Afghanistan and whether or not the White House will take it seriously.  The story is here.

To be fair to the general, something I am usually not concerned with after having spent an almost  twenty five year Coast Guard career being a yeoman near and around countless O-6’s, Rear Admirals and Vice Admirals, this guy was set up. The only people backing him are Pentagon types and that is a reflex action. His report makes no sense to the American people who must supply the young soldiers.

No matter what he wrote in his report, the American people were going to look at it with a jaundiced eye.  There is no way to make these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan acceptable.  We know too much now.  They were one big "set-up" from day one.  They have been phony wars with hidden agendas for rich people from the very beginning.  They are the ultimate wars that never should have been.

These are "war industry" and "energy cartel" forced opportunities for economic growth at the expense of working class kids in uniform.  These young people have been expended for Big Money’s bottom line for over eight years now.  We all know this now and the general is caught between this realization and America’s desire for sanity.  The guy is screwed.

I have seen this countless times in the Service. The scenario kind of works like this. 

There is a crappy job that must get done and someone is picked to "head the effort".  The truth is, that someone is invariably picked to be crucified because the three stars and the four stars and Under Secretaries screwed the whole thing up and a sacrificial lamb is called in to take the heat.  He usually does not realize that at first.

This guy’s career is now going to end on this dark note.  Watch and see.

Not to get into my own personal Service melodrama here, but this is not unusual. 

I cannot tell you how many times I have seen this sort of thing on a much lower level. This guy is being openly sacrificed because there is no strategy for wars that never should have been fought in the first place.  He is being ordered to dress up a corpse and bring it to the party.  There is just no way to make it look alive. 

He must realize this by now.  The guy was set up to take a fall here. 

I will bet you that this did not dawn on him until he delivered that report and it was reported by Bob Woodward’s colleagues at the Washington Post that he called for more troops… and then America collectively ran to the bathroom to vomit. 

He must feel like an idiot right now. 

Trust me, once you are wearing a uniform and realize that you have been setup to take a fall by your superiors, you wear egg on your face for years and years.  There is no way to wipe it off.  You have been sacrificed so that someone or someone(s) else can save face. And you usually do it willingly because you trusted the very same superiors that placed you into this untenable position.  T

This guy was schnookered by his "friends".  He was never meant to succeed.

He almost certainly really thought that his job was to write a secret report on U.S. options in Afghanistan for the White House and Defense Secretary.  What his job really came down to was this:  write a report so that "we" can leak it to the media and you can take the heat for all of us.

"We" can mean almost any number of individuals or groups in D.C.  They are countless.

I bet you that I could tell you twenty examples of this right off the top of my head without even thinking about it that occured on a much more mundane level in the Coast Guard when I served.  Machiavelli has got nothing on the armed forces of this country.  To say that people in high places in uniform can be duplicitous is a gigantic understatement.  They can be downright diabolical.

Eisenhower often referred to this when he wrote anything about his time serving as SHEAF commander in Europe in WWII.  The underhanded and sneaky manipulating moves of all the other Allied commanders that were jealous of his position was nonstop.  His problems with Field Marshall Montgomery were legendary and he had other enemies that undermined practically everything he tried to do…and those enemies were in Allied uniforms, not Axis ones.

McChrystal is now going to find himself increasingly isolated and moved further and further back from any real decision making role at the Pentagon.  This guy has been sacrificed.  I have seen this so many times in the Coast Guard to be wrong here…watch and see….he will retire in a matter of months.

His "friends" turned him into a scapegoat without him knowing by getting him to write a report and then released the report to the media.  I will guarantee you that this report was released to Woodward’s people by other high ranking officers at the Pentagon.

Now, why do I even bring this up?

Because you must understand how common this sort of organizational mashuganah is and how it affects American lives on the battlefield day in and day out.  Kids are literally sacrificed to some general or admiral’s career on a routine basis.  This is no joke.  This is really how the Service works at the highest levels.

I have seen many similar things to this many, many times when working on any one of several Admiral’s staffs.  I am not kidding.  This is commonplace.

And kids were killed and they killed other people all in the name of some general or admiral’s career on any given day in the last eight years.  I am not joking.  This is really how it all works.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)