Any half-coherent media relations expert would have advised Gen. Stanley McChrystal to sprint for cover from freelance writer Michael Hastings’ request for a series of interviews on behalf Rolling Stonemagazine.
After McChrystal survives his Wednesday encounter with the always fuming Barack Obama in the Ogre Office, he should demand a private session over at The Pentagon with whomever hired the civilian “communications strategist” to shadow McChrystal in Afghanistan. Whatever degree of smack down the general endures from Obama should be imposed in equal measure on McChrystal’s assembled p.r. geniuses.
Hastings’ experiences as a war correspondent include the death of his fiance in Iraq, which understandably made him hyper-sensitive to the price of human conflict. The circumstances of his loss are detailed in his book, “I Lost My Love in Baghdad: A Modern War Story”.
That communications strategist, Duncan Boothby (who resigned as soon as word of the provocative Rolling Stone profile spread), might also have taken five minutes to review Hastings’ bio at the entrepreneurial journalism site True/Slant (recently acquired by Forbes).
Hastings is cut from tightly woven, left wing journalistic cloth, it appears. Excerpts from his bio at True/Slant, where he has blogged since the site’s inception in 2009:
“I was the Baghdad correspondent for Newsweek magazine. My work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Slate, Salon, Foreign Policy, the L.A. Times, and other publications of repute.”
How could McChrystal’s advisors not have suspected an ambush? Most of those publications still regard Afghanistan and Iraq as “Bush’s wars”.
The bio offers other red flags:
“Where I’d like to be 10 years from now: Living in the Second Republic of Vermont.”
According to its web site, “The Second Republic of Vermont is a nonviolent citizens’ network and think tank opposed to the tyranny of Corporate America and the U.S. Government, and committed to the peaceful return of Vermont to its status as an independent republic and more broadly to the dissolution of the Union.”
Reverse Libertarianism, perhaps? Disdainful of government tyranny (like most Americans, and certainly all Libertarians), but also opposed to for-profit companies and the existence of the United States (the Union). In other words, not so much in common with a four-star, hard-as-nails general.
Presumably, in jest, the bio concludes with a curious description of Hastings’ secret ambition: “To maintain and cultivate an enemies list.”
While there is growing criticism of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan, with little clarity coming from Obama’s White House on a victory plan, even liberal columnist Joe Klein of Time, writing today online, concedes the U.S. is better off militarily with McChrystal in charge than without him. But Klein concludes that the animosity expressed by the general in Rolling Stone will force Obama to fire him.
“It is a real tragedy,” Klein blogs, “because Stanley McChrystal is precisely the sort of man who should be leading American troops in battle.”
Video images and statistical projections related to the BP oil well disaster are nauseating. The reaction is shared universally. Equally nauseating were Thursday’s Congressional hearings during which hours were committed to the interrogation of BP chief executive Tony Hayward.
In recent days, all have expressed concern, disappointment, frustration, even outrage, toward the current state of the Obama Administration. Some have concluded, to paraphrase, that Obama might not have what it takes to do the job. For most on the list, this marks a first.