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Stanley McChrystal

Stanley Allen McChrystal (14 August 1954-) was a US Army General who served as Commander of JSOC from 2003 to 2008 (succeeding Dell Dailey and preceding William McRaven) and Commander of ISAF from 2009 to 2010 (succeeding David McKiernan and preceding David Petraeus).

Biography[]

McChrystal posing with his troops

McChrystal posing with his troops.

Stanley Allen McChrystal was born in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas in 1954 to a military family, and he graduated from West Point in 1976 and became a US Army lieutenant. McChrystal rose in the ranks during peacetime, and he was promoted to Brigadier-General on 1 January 2001. During the Iraq War, he commanded American forces in Kuwait, and he went on to command JSOC from 2003 to 2008. He headed the most secretive force in the American military, and he was responsible for the raid which killed al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006, and for several other special forces successes in Iraq.

General McChrystal

McChrystal in 2009.

In 2009, McChrystal was appointed to command the ISAF coalition forces in Afghanistan, and he was promoted to General. Immediately upon his arrival, he had his body man Willy Dunne move him into a regular infantryman's quarters rather than a lavish bedroom, and he also had the heads of the individual coalition partners' forces in Afghanistan move their workplaces into a common room to improve their cooperation. That same year, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke, and State Department official Ray Canucci assigned McChrystal the task of compiling an assessment on the situation of the Afghanistan War so that the United States could formulate a withdrawal plan. Before the meeting adjourned, Canucci emphatically told McChrystal that President Barack Obama strongly opposed sending any more troops to the country. McChrystal then toured Afghanistan and met with both ISAF forces and Afghan locals (both civilians and Afghan National Army soldiers), and, after the British Army Lieutenant-Colonel Frank Groom advised McChrystal to "cut Helmand loose" due to the province's strong Taliban sympathies and relative insignificance, the ambitious McChrystal decided to write up his assessment to ask for 40,000 more American troops to take Helmand and prove to the Afghan people that security was attainable.

When Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received the assessment, she informed McChrystal that the administration would sit on the assessment until after the 2009 Afghan presidential election could be held, as a new American offensive might interfere with smooth elections. McChrystal reluctantly agreed, as the election was a month away, but he was angered when Eikenberry and Canucci saw to it that a runoff was held with the objective of providing the Afghan opposition another chance to get rid of the corrupt president Hamid Karzai and deal with any allegations of electoral irregularities. While McChrystal and his Afghan aide Badi Basim insisted that stability was more important, and that rigged elections were normal in Afghanistan (Basim even said that people didn't feel the need to vote in a new President while the current one was alive, and that those who voted were told who to vote for by their community leaders), the bureaucrats ultimately had their way.

McChrystal's 60 Minutes interview

McChrystal's 60 Minutes interview.

McChrystal responded to Washington DC's slowness to act by secretly leaking his assessment to The Washington Post and taking advantage of the media circus to land an appearance on 60 Minutes and subtly criticize President Obama for only speaking to him once in his first 70 days as ISAF commander. The Post leak and the 60 Minutes interview led to Obama authorizing the dispatch of 30,000 more American troops to Afghanistan, although he intended to withdraw them after 18 months; McChrystal and ISAF Director of Intelligence Michael Flynn openly derided Obama and Vice President Barack Obama in discussions with their staff. McChrystal then embarked on a tour of Europe to acquire the remaining 10,000 troops for his planned offensive, and, while France agreed to join McChrystal's offensive after he made a trip to Paris, he was slighted by Obama during a trip to Copenhagen (where Obama claimed to be short on time and merely shook hands with McChrystal on the runway before leaving), and he was humiliated by a female German official on a visit to Berlin, with the official accusing McChrystal of being unable to see the flaws in his own visions, and claiming that his planned offensive would only lead to more losses over time (pointing out that, in McChrystal's presentation on counter-insurgency methods, he only mentioned al-Qaeda - the main targets of the invasion of Afghanistan - once). In spite of this, the official proved to be a voice in the wilderness, and Germany agreed to contribute troops to the offensive, although they were to stay on their base.

McChrystal visiting Marjah

McChrystal visiting Marjah.

McChrystal launched Operation Moshtarak in February 2010; the operation was the largest offensive in Afghanistan since the invasion in 2001, and McChrystal intended for the grand operation to showcase his winning strategy for the Afghanistan War. McChrystal also visited President Karzai at his home while Karzai had a cold, and he succeeded in obtaining Karzai's blessing for the operation, although he failed to convince Karzai to act more like a leader by taking a commanding role in the fight against the Taliban, and Karzai subtly jabbed at McChrystal by saying that he was acting like a leader by being as unavailable to McChrystal as his own president (Obama) was. Shortly after, the operation was bogged down in the face of heavy resistance, leading to McChrystal panicking about what the headlines would say, and civilian casualties led to the inhabitants of the targeted village of Marjah asking McChrystal and his men to leave, as they said that, even if the Americans built schools, their very presence led to continued violence. McChrystal left Marjah disappointed, and, the next day, his civilian media advisor Duncan Boothby told him that the Rolling Stone journalist Michael Hastings, who had accompanied McChrystal and his staff through Europe to write an article about him, had written a hostile article which accused McChrystal and his staff of behaving like drunken tourists in Europe, and of openly disparaging President Obama and Vice President Biden. Two days before the article's publication, on 23 June 2010, Obama had McChrystal tender his resignation, and he retired on 23 July 2010. He became a senior fellow at Yale University, and he endorsed the Democratic candidate for US Congress Seth Moulton in 2014, rejected President Donald Trump's invitation to serve as his Secretary of State, and endorsed Biden's presidential campaign on 1 October 2020.

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