Obama Gets it Right on McChrystal

The War on Terror that Gen. Stanley McChrystal formerly helped prosecute involved dealing with some pretty troubled countries. And part of these countries’ troubles occurred because their men in uniform grew too big for their britches (or, perhaps, their epaulets).
Iraq overthrew its monarchy after military man Abdel Karim Qassim staged a bloody coup in 1958. Qassim didn’t last long, but one of his soldier-successors, Saddam Hussein, did. Pakistan, meanwhile, endured 10 years of military rule after Gen. Pervez Musharraf overthrew Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in 1999. The resulting dictatorship only ended last year.
These tumultuous examples of military misdeeds contrast dramatically with the American tradition of subordinating the military to the chief executive. It is a tradition that has ensured, if not always success abroad, then at least the more important goal of stability at home … and it is a tradition that President Barack Obama upheld when he sacked McChrystal this week following the disclosure of the latter’s unfortunate remarks to Rolling Stone magazine.
For all of soldier-statesman Dwight D. Eisenhower’s warnings about a military-industrial complex, and for all of the continuing growth of our defense budget, our presidents have still stood up to the military in one crucial way. They remind the nation that it is the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue -- and not some would-be Napoleon -- who is Commander-in-Chief.
President Abraham Lincoln gave Gen. George McClellan the heave-ho … repeatedly … during the Civil War for multiple acts of disobedience. President Harry S Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur for insubordinate behavior during the Korean War (which marks the 60th anniversary of its outbreak this year). President Bill Clinton removed Gen. Wesley Clark from command of NATO forces overseeing the war in Kosovo in 1999 due to more obstinacy from the field. Now, Obama has joined his name to that resolute list.
Granted, McChrystal’s missteps seem tame compared to those of McClellan, MacArthur or Clark … and certainly with those of Qassim, Hussein and Musharraf. Still, he should have known better than to disparage his superiors before the media. A soldier, no matter how many stripes he has on his shoulder, should always salute the president and his officials … not give them the raspberry.
Maybe McChrystal felt he earned the right to speak out due to his achievements in Central Asia, which included a good working relationship with Afghan president Hamid Karzai. Maybe he’s even right in his remarks -- maybe the Obama Administration really is leading Afghanistan toward “Chaos-istan.” But the place to voice such misgivings is to the chief executive himself, not to the microphones of the media, and the tragedy of his public comments is that the insubordination they represent outweighs his accomplishments on the battlefield.
Obama may continue to make tactical mistakes in foreign policy, but on a larger issue he is as rock-solid as Lincoln, Truman and Clinton. He knows that democracy can only continue if the politicians can fire the generals, not the other way around.

Shortchanging Latin America

At a bookstore in Saugus on Monday, I asked a staff member if they had any titles on Aztec history. (You might find out why later this week, faithful readers.) The staffer was very helpful and pointed me to the Latin American history section. Yet while I did find works that covered the Aztecs, I was dismayed by a larger issue: The store's entire Latin American history section only covered about one-third of a single shelf.
This illuminates a problem with the American -- or should I say, the United States -- mindset. In our educational systems and media, we devote too little attention to the nations of Latin America, with which we share geographic ties that we ignore at our peril.
I realized the extent of my own ignorance yesterday, when I opened one of the volumes on Mexican history and found that I had never heard of many of the country's natural features, such as its rivers. (Not including the Rio Grande, of course.) This surprised me because I considered myself better-informed about Mexico from the many trips I've taken to visit family there. I can rattle off the names of rivers in far-off places in Europe and the Middle East, but when it comes to basic features on my own continent, I struck out.
The only features of Latin America with which people in the US seem to show a particular interest come in three categories: when we want to go on vacation there (Acapulco, Cancun and Toby Keith‘s Cabo San Lucas), when a political leader does something we don't like (Hugo Chavez of Venezuela being the most prominent example lately), or when we feel the effects from a problem that roils a Latin American nation, such as the Mexican drug cartels or illegal immigration.
Our general lack of interest in Latin America has also helped our government pursue some pretty unsavory policies there, such as the thug-training School of the Americas and the coups we supported in Guatemala in the 1950s and Chile in the 1970s. If we learned more about such schemes and vented as much outrage about them as, say, the international community recently demonstrated on the Israeli blockade in Gaza, perhaps our Latin American policies would be more pacific.
What would be the result if, say, teachers in US public schools taught their students as much about Latin America as they did about Europe? Or if the US media covered Latin America as frequently as the Middle East? Or if bookstores opened their shelves to a spectrum of the richness of Latin American history? We would have a clearer picture of both North and South America: a clearer understanding of why many people from Latin America illegally immigrate to the US, a clearer awareness of why a leader like Chavez appeals to his followers in Venezuela, and a clearer sense that the two continents that form America are not ours to dominate, but to share.
And so I encourage people in the United States to cultivate a greater interest in Latin America. A desire to learn more about our neighboring nations to the south might help us understand them better, and to see the connections across two continents.