VIEW: Dissecting dissent —Shahzad Chaudhry

Militaries the world over do not get deployed on executive impulse alone. This is serious business meant to achieve militarily what seems impossible diplomatically. When militaries apply, they do so to win

McChrystal, by all accounts, was on self-destruct while granting the privilege of proximity to an interposing journalist. Why did he do it? Was it McChrystal’s failure, or does it point to a larger institutional malady? The underlying reasons though are difficult to come by unless one can literally see below the surface at the life and times of any operational commander on his beat.

McChrystal, remember, came into Afghanistan with a huge reputation and most certainly an ego. Ego in the military profession takes a slightly nuanced connotation. It mostly is essential for a fighting entity, individual or collective to fall back on when the chips are down. A soldier embellishes himself with a sense of acquired pride while doing what is easily detestable in any ordinary situation. Does this help understand why so many soldiers, on shedding arms, appear as the strongest proponents of peace? The negative side of the ego in a serving man is the difficulty to determine where may lay the line when professional confidence needs to be tempered and way given to governing convention. The governing convention in peacetime is the artificial equaliser imposed as a covenant by the system that helps save serious embarrassment to the unworthy and seriously inadequate. That is why, in military services, there mostly appears a high-average performing lot at best, given to heavily drilled responses even to the most basic situations. That is why a plethora of rules, regulations and tradition is heavily laden on routine functioning since it is aimed at helping the weakest link survive, not the best one blossom. Herein lies the basic fault-line in the construct and a perpetual source of dissent and frustration within the military system.

War is another scenario when most rules, if not all, are off; when the unworthy and the inadequate pray desperately for the audacious and the arrogant to take over, lead the way and cover for the short-comings of those who have only piggy-backed on an equalising band of rules that have given them relevance in a system where they could have been exposed shorn of compatible capacity on a daily basis. Two different sets of soldiers begin to take shape: one whose real exploits appear when operationally deployed on active beats, and two, those that hide behind the façade of rules and conventions — mostly remaining passengers to real functioning but finding relevance and association through proximity to authority. McChrystal could easily be counted in the first group, and hence his set of difficulties. There is a third group that mixes well the attributes of both, is focused on achieving success in a complex set of expected behaviour and continues to do only the right things without ever risking failure. Such don and acquire poise and will hardly ever let their true self be revealed and be on display for most part of their soldierly life. They eventually succeed, for a complex maze of rules and expectations generally tend to cover their inadequacies, while celebrating their sense of compromise. It may be a harsh judgment, since nothing in a military environment can be stated with finality, but David Petraeus could well be a representative of the last group. He already is popularly recognised as the favourite of the Armed Services Committee in the US Congress with loud supporting whispers touting him to be a possible presidential candidate sometime in the future. For that, though, he will first need to ‘survive’ Afghanistan. The difference between the two types cannot be starker in how their missions are perceived and adapted — a McChrystal will aim to succeed in Afghanistan, while a Petraeus will need to survive Afghanistan. Do not be mistaken by McChrystal’s unadulterated goal of commitment to his military mission; he may actually have his own dream to a political role, maybe on the back of ultra-right support in the political spectrum — unrelenting ideological puritanism and undiluted ferocity in belief and conduct. A Petraeus may well accept a democratic nomination if it augurs well for his chances.

Back to the McChrystal foibles: the US military has a tradition of embedded journalism. The Rolling Stone journalist was lucky to find space with the general’s core office. Why did McChrystal let that happen? Perhaps, that restrained sense of glory, which accompanies a high achiever, could well have found justification with the latest trend of befriending the media to keep on its right side. This remains his most fundamental mistake. From thereon, he should not have been expected to be on display for a full one month. When in war and operationally leading it, the experience is of heightened and mixed emotions. There is a sense of extreme expectation, of seeing dreams turn into reality, of achieving glory and success, of foreboding caution and a risk of failure on the other end, of finding unexpected twists and a more cunning adversary, of failing to have covered all aspects despite detailed scrutiny, of simply getting cold feet and of failing one’s own expectations. One falls prey to intense feeling and emotion and therefore human vulnerability. In the operations rooms, one finds expression of such sense in many ways. The first to go is any pretension, free flowing language is another escape — military commanders tend to convey their belief and intensity through the quality of this free-flowing taxonomy of war that is equally well understood by their surrounding subordinates who can then tailor the urgency accordingly expected of subordinate agencies. It all works well since results get delivered. Would a Petraeus be any different? Perhaps slightly, but not by a large margin. He would, though, be different in one way — that journalist would have never found space within close quarters of the general.

Consider: militaries the world over do not get deployed on executive impulse alone. This is serious business meant to achieve militarily what seems impossible diplomatically. Clear political objectives are a must when militaries are ordered to apply. When militaries apply, they do so to win. There never is a halfway house. That is why Colin Powell’s doctrine of overwhelming force continues to make sense to any military mind. When politicians play games with the military and its work through unclear objectives, half-hearted attempts and changing goal-posts, you get a Vietnam, a botched Iraq and a failing Afghanistan. McChrystal was a winning general, not a political one. Once applied, he needed his resources. That is when politics started in Washington. He was given his halfway house; neither here, nor there. He, on seeing his resources incompatible with the mission, modified the mission, collapsed his forces and came up with the strategy of defending the major cities and securing the residents. He gave up his prime mission to win Afghanistan. He would have done it if he had the resources, political fallout was not his concern — that would be the politicians’ concern when they ordered the war.

In the end, that is what you have: a failing war, a failed general and another one on the line. Poor conception gives poorer consequences. It is not McChrystal who failed; it is both Bush and Obama who have failed their nation and their generals.

Shahzad Chaudhry is a retired air vice marshal and a former ambassador