The Runaway General

I love GEN McChrystal more than ever now. What did the administration think they were going to get with an SF Officer in charge? Someone that isn't sarcastic and speaks his mind? The President and Vice-President need to calm down. On another note, the more I keep reading about Eikenberry lately, the less I like him. He seems to be creating way too much tension everywhere he goes. Calm down Karl, not being made a four-star general before your military retirement isn't the end of the world. I know you are a little jealous of that fourth star on McChrystal's uniform...

The Eik strikes back...

Despite his current loyalty to the new administration policy, LTG(R) Eikenberry's memos on Afghanistan seem to me, an outsider, like they are spot on. Here is the best excerpt from the article linked to above:

On Nov. 6, Mr. Eikenberry wrote: “President Karzai is not an adequate strategic partner. The proposed counterinsurgency strategy assumes an Afghan political leadership that is both able to take responsibility and to exert sovereignty in the furtherance of our goal — a secure, peaceful, minimally self-sufficient Afghanistan hardened against transnational terrorist groups.

“Yet Karzai continues to shun responsibility for any sovereign burden, whether defense, governance or development. He and much of his circle do not want the U.S. to leave and are only too happy to see us invest further,” Mr. Eikenberry wrote. “They assume we covet their territory for a never-ending ‘war on terror’ and for military bases to use against surrounding powers.”

He continued, “Beyond Karzai himself, there is no political ruling class that provides an overarching national identity that transcends local affiliations and provides reliable partnership.”

In a second cable, dated Nov. 9, he expressed new concerns: “In a PBS interview on November 7, Karzai sounded bizarrely cautionary notes about his willingness to address governance and corruption. This tracks with his record of inaction or grudging compliance in this area.”

Previous posts on Karl Eikenberry:

McChrystal Hearing

Eikenberry to Washington: Show me the money!

Our Afghanistan Ambassador

Also, take a look at this old post, from September 2008, on Pakistan's Army Chief GEN Kayani:

New Pakistani Army Chief

Our Afghan Ambassador: The Man in the Middle

First it was GEN Jones having trouble as National Security Advisor, now apparently LTG Eikenberry is having trouble as ambassador. I am convinced that their "trouble" is based on a leadership style that the politicos can't quite grasp and the politicos inferiority complex when it comes to the generals' deep knowledge of a military establishment they will never come close to matching no matter how many Bob Woodward books they read. The generals probably just want things done by a certain time with little debate whereas the politicos want to analyze everything for days on end and talk about (their feelings) how exhausted they are from working long hours. I think GEN Jones had it right when he said if you don't haven all of your work done by 7 p.m. there is something wrong...

The bottom line is that Mr. Eikenberry is the perfect man for this job. I wish he had been promoted to four-star general before he retired so GEN Petraeus and GEN McChrystal didn't have buried in their respective "das Es" that they "outrank" him. Ambassador Eikenberry, with his education and military hands-on and diplomatic experience, bridges the gap between the over-educated, under-practical experienced, armchair generals/diplomats filling top posts in the State Department, and the Army, who suffers from the opposite (too much practical policy implementation experience, often not as educated as the State Dept. politicos).

Eikenberry to Washington: Show me the money!

If Karl says show me the money, the Obama administration and Congress needs to show him the money. Here is the Army biography of the current ambassador to Afghanistan:
LTG(R) Karl Eikenberry

Below is a clip portraying LTG Eikenberry calling Obama aide Tom Cruise: