Wednesday, June 23, 2010

On McChrystal Part II

OK, I can see why McChrystal was fired. He's lucky to not get Court Martialed (Article 88 of the UCMJ) But why the hell did President Obama demote GEN Petraeus as his replacement? Petraeus was Central Command's Commander, i.e. McChrystal's boss.

Which brings up the question of who is replacing Petraeus at Central Command? For a while Lt. General Allen (USMC) will take over, but he's a three star and that's a 4 star slot. This also puts the Central Command in the some what odd position of having a 4 star general under the operation command of a 3 star general. Obama needs to get a replacement in a Central Command ASAP. Either promote LTGEN Allen (which might be tricky given that the USMC has a very limited number of full (i.e 4 star) generals (like one I recall correctly, the commandant of the Marines )) or find some under-employed 4 star that is willing to take that job, and please not a squid or a zomer.

Of course, IMAO, the correct sequence would have been fire McChrystal, brevet Allen to 4 stars (and get him confirmed by the US Senate ASAP), and assign him to AfPac commander. Among other things things, the USMC seems to have their collective shit together more in Afghanistan than the non-special forces US Army does. The USMC does have a longer (and more successful) history of "Small Wars" than the US Army does. But what do I know, I was just a SP/5 in the Army. Wait, that's more experience than Obama has...

2 comments:

The Scrub said...

To quote Jonah Goldberg "It is not a demotion to be considered the indispensable man in the most important challenge facing the military."

Mike Looney said...

It's still a demotion. It's some what scary that we have only one 3+ star general officer that doesn't have, shall we say, issues, in the US Army right now. Of course most of the current Lt. Generals or above would have gotten their first star under either the Clinton regime or under Rumsfield and you know what I think about both of them.