Who the Hell Is Stanley McChrystal?
May 19, 2009
Will America's new commander in Afghanistan rebuild the country? Or is he there to do what he's always done best: kill terrorists?
A detailed analysis lays bare what little we know about the secretive man they call "the Pope."
UPDATES: What Happens After the McChrystal Firing? Plus Thomas P.M. Barnett on the Rolling Stone Fallout and John H. Richardson on the Torture Connection >>
By Tim Heffernan
May 19, 2009
Barely a week ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced a major change in the United States's prosecution of the war in Afghanistan. General David McKiernan was out as the head of American-led NATO forces. General Stanley McChrystal was in.
In Washington, the initial response was mild shock: McKiernan is a highly respected, battle-tested officer, and had been in the Afghanistan post for less than a year. The firing effectively ended his career, and in the most brutally public way imaginable.
The second response was a question: Who the hell is Stanley McChrystal?
In a sense, nobody really knows. McChrystal, currently director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) from September 2003 to August 2008. JSOC is the military's most secretive branch (many of its components are still not officially acknowledged to exist), charged with its most secretive missions — identifying, tracking, killing, or capturing and interrogating the highest-level members of Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups. That it does so in conjunction with the CIA, DIA, FBI, and other intelligence agencies only makes JSOC's task more sensitive. So it is no accident that the branch's former commander is himself basically unknown to the media, Congress, and the public at large. His were not the sort of missions after which press conferences are called.
Nonetheless we do know, crucially, two people close to McChrystal: General David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command, and General David Rodriguez, former commander of the U.S. Army's Taliban hunters in Afghanistan. McChrystal, reports the Atlantic's Marc Ambinder, shares his friend Petraeus's instinct for "commander's intent" — the ability to implement in detail the broad military goals of the commander in chief. For his part, Rodriguez will be McChrystal's right-hand man in Afghanistan; both men, the Pentagon told Slate's Fred Kaplan, are "champing at the bit" and "will do what is necessary to win."
However, most of what we know about Stanley McChrystal — and it's not much; fewer than 50 newspaper and magazine stories, including one of our own, featured him in any meaningful way prior to his recent appointment, according to the Lexis Nexis database — is what he has done. Of course, that's what the question of "Who is he?" is trying to get at: what he has done before, and therefore what he is likely to do in his new command. And what he has done suggests that he is an extraordinary leader — and perhaps a ruthless one. That he is an unparalleled hunter of suspected terrorists — and perhaps the overseer of their torture. That he has favored targeted military action over broad counterinsurgency and nation-building — and that he may be bringing that dramatic shift in strategy to Afghanistan. Herein, a thorough accounting of what this may mean for the future of the "forgotten" war.
it is a fairly long read, anons. here is link for rest of it
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a5922/who-is-stanley-mcchrystal-051909/