Well, like everyone here I’m sure, I was waiting for days it seemed to read Wretchard’s take on the RS article, and as usual, he finds something more profound to say.

But I’m going to try and push this thread in that direction for a reason.

I agree McChrystal should have been fired, because a man with such supremely bad judgment as to agree to let the RS reporter have such access must have supremely bad judgment elsewhere. (And yes, I would still like to hear others’ take on the reason for this exceptional lack of judgment. 4 possibilities: 1. naivete, 2. such ego as to believe he could charm/con/otherwise win over the RS reporter, 3. such ego as to wish to play with the AfPak war by political means at home, and thought he’d use the RS story to do so, 4. apathy or actual self-destructiveness causing him to not care about the fallout of this interview for the war. 1 is not plausible. 2 is plausible, but doesn’t explain his aides’ loose tongues. 3 and 4 both seem plausible, and especially 3, given how McChrystal got into this job in the first place, but I’m trending to 4, because it seems to fit the profile, and may not actually be distinct from 3.)

So for me the question is: are we failing now in AfPak because COIN was poorly executed by McChrystal, whose ego was more important to him than the mission? Clearly, we were in trouble before McChrystal, but how much of what’s there now is actually do to his bad judgment?

Is Petraeus the only man in the army who not only gets COIN, but gets how to force Army brass not to mess it up?

We seem to have reached a point in military doctrine that depends on the personality of the leader. We’ve been here before, clearly, with Patton and others. Is it inevitably true for the difficult battles? or is it something that happens because of a rot in the institution that only such an outlier can fix?