5 Reasons Obama Should Not Have Let McChrystal Go

(June 23) -- President Barack Obama has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation as his Afghanistan war commander.

To the vast majority of pundits, Obama had no choice because of the uproar caused by a Rolling Stone article in which the general and his aides made disparaging remarks about top civilian officials -- including the vice president. But before the president announced McChrystal's resignation this afternoon, a few commentators argued against dumping the architect of the counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan.

1. McChrystal Really Isn't a Bad Guy
Brookings Institution senior fellow Michael O'Hanlon praised McChrystal as brilliant, devoted and "one of the most respectful and even kindhearted generals" he's ever known. He called the comments in Rolling Stone "particularly unusual and out of character." O'Hanlon wrote in a USA Today op-ed that McChrystal's "serious mistakes need to be balanced against his broader track record."

2. It's Really Obama's Fault
The embattled general also got support in The Washington Post's editorial pages.

"Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal should not lose his job because of the article about him in Rolling Stone magazine. If anyone deserves blame for the latest airing of the administration's internal feuds over Afghanistan, it is President Obama," Jackson Diehl wrote in a PostPartisan column that faulted the commander in chief for tolerating "deep divisions between his military and civilian aides over how to implement the counterinsurgency strategy."

A Post editorial this morning made the same point about the feuding and said firing McChrystal "would hand a victory to those in his administration who have resisted the counterinsurgency operations."

3. This Is No Time to Change Commanders
Several of the general's supporters cited his strong relations with Afghan President Hamid Karzai and other leaders in the region. Many also warned that removing the top commander at such a pivotal moment, with the U.S. troop buildup still not complete, could doom the whole nine-year-long war effort.

"Any suggestion that the war is lost is ludicrously premature, and it could prove just as wrong as the naysaying in early 2007 that the Iraq surge had failed at a time when it had barely begun," said the Council on Foreign Relations' Max Boot in a New York Times opinion piece. Boot added that McChrystal "deserves credit for energizing a lethargic command and putting in place the right strategy to turn around a failing war effort."

"Whether or not he carries it out, his plan can work. We just need to give it a little time."

4. Obama Ends Up Looking Bad Either Way
Beyond the outcome of the war itself, there are political implications to Obama's decision about his "runaway general." Giving McChrystal the boot "only months into the troop surge" looks "less like strong, principled leadership than the type of rash, gut-level, Bush-43-style decision-making that so many have grown to despise," said Salon's James Doty.

"The idea that the president's decision would be based on anything other than McChrystal's ability to implement Obama's Afghanistan strategy betrays near-Nixonian levels of political cynicism." Doty added."Can anyone seriously suggest that the president dismiss the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in America's longest-ever war, based on sassy comments in a magazine article, because the optics would be good?"

National Review Online's Daniel Foster contended that whatever credibility Obama has on Afghanistan is due to McChrystal's work. Because of that, firing the general "would be disastrous for Obama, not just on substance but politically," he cautioned.

"Fairly or unfairly," Foster added, it makes Obama "look petty and prideful, willing to let an (admittedly serious) breach in decorum set back our best chance for success in the longest war in American history," Foster added.

This could be a no-win situation for the president. No less an authority than Donald "You're Fired" Trump said on "Fox and Friends" this morning that Obama would look "terrible ... weak and ineffective" if he didn't dump McChrystal. (Click here to see video)

On the other hand, Commentary's Jennifer Rubin argued that sticking with McChrystal would help Obama "shed his peevish and self-absorbed persona, to demonstrate to friends and foes that he can command a war effort."

5. Ex-Generals Sometimes Run for President
By firing McChrystal, Obama might "be minting a possible new Republican presidential or vice presidential candidate to oppose him in 2012," added James P. Pinkerton.

"In wartime, people naturally look to military leaders," Pinkerton wrote in an Fox News op-ed. He noted that Gen. George McClellan, fired by President Lincoln in 1862, ran against him two years later. And Douglas MacArthur tried unsuccessfully to capture the Republican presidential nomination in 1952 to challenge Harry Truman, who fired him a year earlier.