GENERAL McCHRYSTAL'S RELIEF

“The Joint Chiefs have ordered everyone to stay in their homes. Do not leave your homes until permitted to do so.”

It’s been 35 years since Cranky heard those words. They were spoken in jest but Cranky, a young Army Reserve Officer on a two-week active duty tour at a headquarters in Japan, of all places, still found them somewhat chilling. The time was early August 1974, and the Watergate Scandal had reached its climax: Richard Nixon was resigning as President of the United States.

Cranky was with a small group of Army officers, most of them colonels, lieutenant colonels, and majors—and thus senior to him—in a conference room. The group was waiting for a meeting on a long forgotten subject to begin. A television monitor was replaying a stateside news report on Nixon’s resignation, and a few of those watching were providing largely humorous commentary. One such comment was the above implication that martial law had been declared.

The comment elicited no more noticeable reaction than the other comments. The television was soon switched off, the meeting called to order, and those present returned to mundane things.

But the words stuck with Cranky all these years and came quickly to mind when the Rolling Stone article on General Stanley McChrystal appeared. The comments and banter reported in the article are most likely not unfamiliar to those who have spent time in or around the military. The thing difficult to comprehend is their utterance in the presence of an outsider, particularly a member of the media.

Here are two thoughts. First, General McChrystal and at least some members of his staff are of the special operations community. Members of this community are a unique breed. Very well-trained and capable. But also very isolated. Macho to a fault. And for the most part contemptuous of outsiders, including even members of the regular military community.

The special ops community has limited contact with members of the media, and what contact that does occur is usually with very supportive reporters and under very controlled conditions. Then comes a high profile regular assignment such as Commander of all forces in Afghanistan. The media is no longer as dependably friendly and the conditions no longer as controllable. General McChrystal may have recognized the changed environment but at least some of his staff apparently did not. They still felt free to utter politically incorrect things and to bad mouth any outsiders. They didn’t get the change from secret base Zulu One to front and center in Kabul.

Thought number two concerns a compounding of the situation. The United States military, particularly the Army, is no longer a self-supporting outfit. All sorts of administrative and logistical functions once done by soldiers are now done by civilian employees and contractors. This may save some money, but it means less control by the military chain of command.

One field that has seen growth in nonmilitary personnel is public affairs. Part of this is the general outsourcing of military jobs. But part of it has been the result of efforts to ensure that military spokespersons, particularly at a high level, are saying things compatible with the desires of the Administration in power. And still a third part is a feeling that in this media dominated world, an “expert” in all things media is needed.

Ponder the contrast in spokespersons between the Gulf War in 1990-91 and the Iraq War that commenced in 2003. The spokespersons at General Norman Schwarzkoph’s headquarters during the Gulf War were occasionally the General his own self and at most other times a high ranking military officer performing public affairs duties. For the Iraq War, the military spokespersons enjoyed no such solitude. The uncertainties about why the Iraq War was being fought, what it was achieving, and how success was being measured apparently meant that public affairs could not be left to the military. Civilian spokespersons from the Bush Administration were prominent at military briefings and played leading roles in public affairs efforts.

According to media reports, including one in the Washington Post on June 22, civilian media advisors for high ranking military officers have become common. General McChrystal had one such advisor, Duncan Boothby. He resigned when the Rolling Stone interview first came to public attention. In the words of the Washington Post article, “Military officials say civilians are often better suited to provide constructive criticism and unconventional ideas than military public affairs professionals.”

Maybe so, but here’s an assertion from a former military public affairs professional: if a military public affairs professional with explicit responsibility for public affairs had been on General McChrystal’s staff, there’s no way the General and his subordinates would have been blabbing like the stereotype of gossipy, back-biting teenage girls. Outsourcing has its limits.

SOUTH CAROLINA

The next time South Carolinians want to secede from the United States, let ‘em. In fact, maybe we ought to throw them out. Whoever said the state was too small to be a republic but too large to be an insane asylum was certainly on point.

Mark Sanford, his Argentine Honey, and the Appalachian Trail; two alleged Southern Gentlemen publicly claiming sex with a female politician; another alleged Southern Gentleman calling that female politician a “raghead”; Lee Atwater; allegations that John McCain fathered in interracial child out of wedlock; Democratic Senatorial Primary winner Alvin Greene; Senator Jim DeMint. Is it the water, the mosquitoes, or what?

A successful democracy requires a modicum of maturity on the part of the electorate. South Carolina, you don’t make the cut.