A fellow general argues that McChrystal arranged his own firing

This essay, by Major Gen. Jerry Curry, reflects precisely my reading of this episode from Day One. Gen. Stanley McChrystal had served his country honorably and well for a long time, but was soon to take the Afghanistan war to a new level, in Marja, under an erratic, leftist preisdent who had no military experience. The more he thought about it, the less he liked his odds. In the end, he decided his situation was impossible, so he chose an imaginative way to get himself fired.

Gen. Curry:

The beginning of the push to clear Afghanistan of Taliban influence was to have started weeks ago with the city of Marja. The operational plan had the blessing of the White House, Obama’s national security staff, Secretary of Defense Gates and General Petraeus. Yet one of General McChrystal’s final acts before the Rolling Stone article was published was to postpone the Marja operation until autumn. Some believe it was because the people of Marja were not quite ready for the offensive to begin. I’d like to suggest a different possibility, though.

What if the real reason the Marja operation was delayed was because General McChrystal had come to the conclusion that the war in Afghanistan was unwinable so long as Obama was Commander-in-Chief. What if McChrystal expected his forces to get mired down in Marja (and other places in Afghanistan) because he believed that President Obama did not have the guts to do what it takes to win the war? Perhaps he suspected that Obama would do his usual side step, blame, and scapegoat routine and ultimately try to wrap the Afghan loss around McChrystal’s own neck. Maybe McChrystal had no intention of seeing his military career end in disgrace and failure, of being known forever as the General who had lost the Afghan War.

So what if McChrystal had laid a trap for Michael Hastings, Rolling Stone Magazine, the Pentagon, and President Obama and they had stepped right into it? What if they had simply “been had” by Gen. McChrystal who was not willing to play the stiff upper lip role assigned to him in this Afghan tragedy and figured the best way to historically save his own reputation was to get himself fired? What if Obama had glibly walked into the trap and fired McChrystal not suspecting that that was exactly what McChrystal wanted him to do?