In his column today, Eugene Robinson writes that Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the president's hand-picked general to lead the Afghan campaign, has "no business" outlining his preferred strategy in public. McChrystal and the generals who support more troops and a focus on population security in Afghanistan, Robinson writes, "need to shut up and salute." Liberals had a very different attitude, of course, when generals like Eric Shinseki and John Batiste criticized the Bush-Rumsfeld strategy in Iraq. But I guess they'd say that was another war, and another president, one who had an "R" appended to his name. Still, not every liberal has forgotten. William Galston is making sense:
How quickly we forget: That was the rationale used to muzzle General Eric Shinseki during the run up to the Iraq war. Wouldn't we have been better off to have had a no-holds-barred debate involving senior military officials prior to the invasion about the number of troops it would take to stabilize Iraq after the invasion? Wouldn't we have had the kind of public discussion that the American people deserved but did not get? Does McChrystal's speech put pressure on the president, as some have charged? Sure, and what's wrong with that? The general is saying that the mission the president articulated back in March after a thorough policy review requires more troops than are now on the ground in Afghanistan. If he's right about that, the president owes the country one of two things: send the troops or redefine the mission. McChrystal's intervention makes it more difficult to fudge the decision. In my book, that's a good thing. And people who don't want more troops sent should agree.
Galston has emerged as one of the most incisive liberal analysts of the Obama presidency. Every word he writes is worth reading.