The Operators

News is nothing but words,

and you can never really tell if words are news

--Jose Saramago
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A Ranger reader suggested Michael Hasting's book, The Operators: The Wild and Terrifying Inside Story of America's War in Afghanistan," about the "relief for cause" of 4-Star General Stanley McChrystal; to McChrystal acolytes, Hasting did a hatchet job on the General.

What Hastings does well is to represent the chasm between McChrystal's cadre and the average citizen: "McChrystal appears to represent a new kind of military elite, a member of a warrior class that has lost touch with the civilian world" (74), and "The American public -- with an overwhelming apathy -- had lost touch with the military, too "(75).

That is Hasting's take-home message: The civilian leadership and the civilians themselves are divorced from the military, all viewing matters through different lenses. The one consistent between the political and military elite is a certain hubris not rooted in reality, couched behind The Story. McChrystal is spun as a one-meal-a-day Spartan who runs 12 miles before breakfast, but here he is living high off the hog in posh Paris digs; why wasn't he and his entourage billeted in NATO transitional quarters, more in keeping with the spin?

It seems few are free from that arrogance and sense of entitlement -- witness events like the recent Secret Service prostitution scandal or the the Government Accountability Office (GAO) behaving not so accountably in Las Vegas. Such an old story: Done in by hubris.

How do guys like McChrystal get promoted to the O-10 strata? How do they make even General Officer -- what is the cut? If he is as represented in this book, it would be wise to scrap West Point and rely upon Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) to train our officer cadre.

A redefinition of success and leadership is called for.