[T]he behavior of General McChrystal captured by a reporter with unfettered access to him did not just show indiscipline or insubordination, they called into question the military doctrine that General McChrystal championed....
[The strategy is:] You can't kill your way to victory. Instead, the goal is to secure population centers, set up Afghan governance, set up governance that itself keeps insurgents in check even after the military campaign is over.
....if General McChrystal, if he is the guy responsible for that strategy and preaching that strategy that requires unity of effort between the military and all of these non-military people who are needed to win a war like this, you can't both be that guy and be the guy who's talking smack about all of the non-military people who even you say are essential to your mission. You can't be the guy who says that's necessary and the guy who talks all that smack.
How is it that Rachel Maddow zeroed in on this obvious point, and everyone else pretty much seemed to miss it, the way that Rip Van Winkle missed the Revolutionary War? Maddow's lonely grasp of the central contradiction in the McChrystal affair staring us right in the face shows once again how totally and utterly clueless the entire Versailles establishment really is.
