Obama Was Right To Relieve McChrystal Of Duty

 
McChrystal, or perhaps his staff, but certainly with his go-ahead, released statements which supposedly we will see tomorrow that are unacceptable to his role as a high-ranking military commander. It was an in-the-face challenge to the Commander-in-Chief, who happens to be Obama at the moment. If it was a deliberate affront by McChrystal to see how far he could push matters, well, the General learned exactly that. If it was an unintended overreach (unlikely in my opinion), it represented a failure of essential discipline of himself and his staff. Either way, Obama had no choice but to follow Harry Truman's course of action with General MacArthur: effective insubordination, whether it meets the legal definition or not, is simply not to be tolerated in an effective military.