When last I looked, President Obama was McChrystal’s Commander-in-Chief. Eric Cantor and the rest of the GOP shrill machine are wrong as usual.
Washington Post – The Plum Line
Republican response to the Rolling Stone article is fascinating: The House GOP leadership is suggesting it reveals that Stanley McChrystal is “frustrated” with President Obama over the war, perhaps because he isn’t giving the troops “what they need.”
Eric Cantor’s office emails over this:
Obviously a General and his top brass don’t make statements like these without being frustrated, so I hope that the President’s meeting with General McChrystal will include a frank discussion about what is happening on the ground, and whether the resources and the plan are there to defeat terrorists and accomplish our mission in Afghanistan. Without question, the article in Rolling Stone raises a lot of concerns, but our top priority must be to ensure that our forces in Afghanistan have what they need in order to successfully execute their mission and win the war there.
At the moment, Democrats in Congress are standing in the way of a clean bill to fund our troops and provide the resources needed because they want to lard it up with domestic spending. We need to get our troops these funds, and should do so without any pork or unrelated domestic spending items thrown in.
This is in keeping with previous GOP attempts to subtly drive a wedge between Obama and McChrystal, at the expense (it goes without saying) of Obama. When Obama decided to send more troops to Afghanistan, multiple Republicans cast it as a decision by McChrystal and the commanders, suggesting that Obama was merely following their lead.
Now the GOP response to the Rolling Stone article isn’t to worry whether it constitues insubordination towards the Commander in Chief, but to suggest that the commanders may have good reason to be “frustrated” with Obama and Dems for some reason.
