The US commander in Afghanistan has been forced to apologise over a magazine profile in which he launches a blistering attack on the US Administration, mocking the Vice-President while his aides dismiss President Obama.
Tensions between the military and the White House burst into the open with General Stanley McChrystal’s interview with Rolling Stone magazine, in which he also denounces the US Ambassador to Kabul.
His aides were less than flattering about President Obama and frequently derided top civilian leaders, including the special envoy Richard Holbrooke. One anonymous aide calls the White House national security adviser James Jones “a clown”.
“I extend my sincerest apology for this profile,” General McChrystal said in a statement issued hours after the article was released.
“It was a mistake reflecting poor judgment and should never happened.”
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General McChrystal, a former special operations chief, usually speaks cautiously in public and has enjoyed mostly sympathetic US media coverage since he took over the Nato-led force last year. But the article appears to catch him and his staff in unguarded moments.
“Throughout my career, I have lived by the principles of personal honour and professional integrity. What is reflected in this article falls far short of that standard.
“I have enormous respect and admiration for President Obama and his national security team,” he added.
In the interview General McChrystal, who clashed with the US Administration over his demands for more troops to Afghanistan, cracked jokes about Joe Biden, the Vice-President, and accused the man the White House chose to be his diplomatic partner, ambassador Karl Eikenberry of betraying him in a White House debate over America’s campaign strategy last year.
Asked about Mr Biden, a known sceptic of the commander’s strategy in Afghanistan, General McChrystal says, laughing: “Are you asking about Vice President Biden? Who’s that?”
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One of his senior advisers adds: “Biden? Did you say: Bite Me?”
General Chrystal tells the magazine he felt “betrayed” by Mr Eikenberry in a White House debate over the US campaign in Afghanistan.
Referring to a leaked internal memo from Mr Eikenberry that questioned his request for more troops, the commander suggested the ambassador had tried to protect himself for history’s sake.
“I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” General McChrystal tells the magazine.
“Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’”
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Mr Eikenberry, himself a former commander in Afghanistan, had written to the White House saying President Karzai of Afghanistan was an unreliable partner and that a “surge” of troops could draw the United States into a open-ended quagmire.
The article revisits the friction between the White House and the military last autumn as Mr Obama debated whether to grant the general’s request for tens of thousands of reinforcements.
Although Mr Obama in the end granted most of what General McChrystal asked for, the strategy review was a difficult time, the general tells the magazine.
“I found that time painful,” he says. “I was selling an unsellable position.”
An unnamed adviser to the general alleges that he came away unimpressed after a meeting with the President in the Oval Office a year ago, just after Mr Obama appointed him to take charge of the war in Afghanistan.
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“It was a ten-minute photo op,” the general’s adviser says.
“Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was ... he didn’t seem very engaged.
“The boss was pretty disappointed,” says the adviser.
The profile, titled “The Runaway General,” portrays the general’s aides as profane and intensely loyal to him.
The four-star general also derides Richard Holbrooke, the Administration’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, who last year came close to falling out with the Afghan leadership over claims of fraud in the presidential election.
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“Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” General McChrystal says, looking at his messages on a mobile phone. “I don’t even want to open it.”
During a visit to Paris, he goes on to complain about a dinner with an unnamed French minister.
In a hotel room in Paris getting ready for a dinner with the French official, the general says: “How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?”
“The dinner comes with the position, sir,” says his aide, Colonel Charlie Flynn.
“Hey, Charlie,” Gen McChrystal says, “Does this come with the position?”
General McChrystal gives him the middle finger.