When CBS late night talk show host David Letterman faced a $2 million extortion threat, he neither tried to make the matter quietly go away by paying nor loudly protested his innocence. Instead, he turned in the blackmailer to authorities and confessed to his studio and television audiences last Thursday night that he was indeed guilty of having several affairs with female staffers on his show.

The confession earned applause and good reviews for Letterman. His combination of straight talk, deftly balanced with self-deprecating humor, drew particular praise. I can agree with this assessment. However poor a light Letterman’s philandering and workplace sexism casts on his character otherwise, he deserves kudos for owning up and telling the truth once caught at it.

On Monday night, Letterman was back for the first new show since his initial confession. This time, he issued a somber on-air apology to his wife, who he acknowledged had been “horribly hurt by my behavior.” Although Letterman maintains the affairs occurred before he married this past March, he and his wife, Regina Lasko, have been involved since 1986 and had a son together in 2003.

As before, Letterman mixed his contrition with humorous one-liners. Once again, the studio audience and TV critics lapped it up. Some think this scandal and Letterman’s handling of it could cement his position atop the new talk show heap resulting from Jay Leno’s departure from NBC’s Tonight Show. In Letterman’s own words, “If you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it.”

Here is where I part company with many in their continuing admiration. Issuing a general apology to his wife on the air ? If Letterman did it instead of apologizing directly to his wife, he apologized to the wrong person(s). If he did it in addition to a personal apology, which I assume is most likely, it is superfluous.

In fact, I question whether it is an act of contrition at all but rather a passive-aggressive tactic on Letterman’s part to garner sympathy for himself by publicly displaying what a noble, upright kind of person he is. I have always liked Letterman and I am glad his audience is apparently not deserting him over this scandal. However, if he sincerely wants to fix things, he appears to have forgotten where his loyalties truly lie in this regard.

It is the same problem I see with General Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. and NATO field commander in Afghanistan. McChrystal sparked controversy last week for publicly disagreeing with any future policy for Afghanistan besides the one he personally favors.

McChrystal strongly believes the only way to long-term military success is building trust among Afghan civilians by protecting them from the Taliban. His plan would require as many as forty thousand additional troops and has the backing of most Republican Congressional leaders.

Others within the Obama Administration, most notably Vice-President Joe Biden, as well as some Democratic Congressional leaders, support a narrower approach, more focused on counterinsurgency techniques and training Afghan forces.

President Obama invited McChrystal to present his approach via videoconference from Kabul before the national security team. The report he presented warns “failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum” over the next twelve months “risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.” The other camp sharply challenged McChrystal during his presentation.

The next day, last Thursday, McChrystal gave a speech at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, where an audience member asked him if thought the narrower option had any chance for success. “The short answer is ‘no’,” McChyrstal replied. He went on to characterize such as strategy as “short sighted” and warn it would leave Afghanistan “in chaos.”

Chastisement was quick in coming. The President summoned McChrystal to Copenhagen the next day for a private meeting aboard Air Force One. National Security Adviser James Jones dryly suggested, “It is better for military advice to come up through the chain of command.” Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was equally understated but firm, asserting that military and civilian leaders “provide our best advice to the President candidly but privately.”

Counter-chastisement was equally prompt. “The White House finds a four-star scapegoat for its Afghan jitters,” trumpeted the Wall Street Journal this morning.

For his part, McChrystal was remorseful for any damage he may have caused but insisted he meant no harm and was simply trying to speak forthrightly, as encouraged by Obama, in promoting the mission given him by Obama.

As with Letterman, I question whether his London comments represents advice but rather a passive-aggressive tactic on McChrystal’s part to garner international and public sympathy, in order to force U.S. foreign policy into only one acceptable option – all the while displaying what a noble, upright kind of person he is. It is an apology in advance for failure that seeks to absolve him from future blame.

He achieved some success to this end. Yesterday, Michael O'Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, defended McChrystal’s moral duty to speak out against his superiors, since he is “personally responsible for the lives of 100,000 NATO troops.” (As if, somehow, the President, Congress, Security Council, and Secretary of Defense are not?)

I agree that pulling down McChrystal as a scapegoat is wrong but I am equally repulsed seeing him propped up as a strawman. The problem is not that a general disagreed with Obama or even did so openly to his face in the national security council. The problem was going public with his objections, especially before a decision was forthcoming.

Eugene Robinson of the Washington Post sums it up best.

“What we want to achieve in Afghanistan is a political question and we don't pay our generals to do politics. That's the job of the President and Congress – and whether our elected leaders decide to pull out tomorrow or stay for a hundred years, the generals' job is to make it happen . . . If military officers want to devise and implement geopolitical strategy, they should leave their jobs and run for office.”

Bruce Ackerman, a professor at Yale Law School, argues this whole affair “should provoke a broader discussion of the meaning of civilian control [over the military] in the Twenty-First Century.” As if on cue, O’Hanlon asserts the oft-repeated hawkish saw that McChrystal’s take on things is both the correct one and justified in its promotion because, as a soldier in the field, he automatically “understands reality far better than most in Washington.”

Likewise, the Wall Street Journal chortles that McChyrstal’s critics “have very short memories,” noting that when it was learned General Eric Shinseki, now Secretary of Veterans Affairs in Obama’s Cabinet, disagreed with former President Bush over troop levels in Iraq, he became a liberal hero overnight. The Journal seems to suffer its own problem with cognitive retention by failing to note that Shinseki was summarily fired as a result.

McChrystal recently told Newsweek he would not resign if the Administration ultimately rejects his request for more troops. Although his concern for the soldiers under his command motivates him to speak out, he apparently has not thought about or does not care the impact upon their morale if he subsequently asks them to follow him in a mission he has openly condemned as doomed to failure.

If the narrower option for Afghanistan prevails and McChyrstal really believes it is un-winnable, he should immediately relinquish his command and turn it over to someone who can both follow orders and believe in them. If he does not truly believe in his own pronouncements, he needs to make a very public, very general confession and apology.

And he needs to think very hard about where his loyalties really lie in this regard.

To some extent, context should count. McChrystal answered a question at an appearance that had already been scheduled (if I understand the facts correctly). He should have ducked, but still it isn't quite the same as if he went looking for the chance to promote his viewpoint.

But regardless of McChyrstal's motives, capabilities, or options, he's put Obama in a tough spot. He was team Obama's choice to replace McKiernan who had been generally well-regarded for his performance in both Iraq and Afghanistan. McChrystal was selected in spite of a couple well know liabilities because he was the right man to execute the administration's strategy in Afghanistan--so we were told. Either he was the right choice and Obama is dithering over military strategy for political reasons now, or Obama is being careful and deliberate now, but wasn't when he tapped McChrystal for the job.

Letterman and McChrystal? That's really weak, Bell. Bending over backward to be even-handed. How are the two even on the same plane? You didn't quite establish that equivalence, y'know. For them's as pay attention to your words.

McChrystal is frustrated. Understandably as his guys are getting shot and killed, and the President, nine months into his term, has only now deigned to devote an hour or so to the wars we've got going. A little public pressure is not just useful "politically" but vital in a life-and-death sense to get President Hamlet to finally decide something.

Eugene Robinson does not put it best, o David Broder of the Fray. William Ralston at the New Republic puts it best:

Does McChrystal’s speech put pressure on the president, as some have charged? Sure, and what’s wrong with that? The general is saying that the mission the president articulated back in March after a thorough policy review requires more troops than are now on the ground in Afghanistan. If he’s right about that, the president owes the country one of two things: send the troops or redefine the mission. McChrystal’s intervention makes it more difficult to fudge the decision. In my book, that’s a good thing. And people who don’t want more troops sent should agree.

The President's job is primarily to defend the country, and he's spent damned little time on it. As in his dealings with Congress, he has difficulty making his wishes known, because he hasn't figured out what they are. Derelicition of duty.

McChrystal's first loyalty is to his troops, as is apparent from his statements. If this is incompatible with the President's desires, or lack thereof, he should certainly resign. The only honorable course. But he owes nobody an apology.

Lifted from Nabokov’s Lolita

Headmistress Miss Pratt:

What we are concerned with is the adjustment of the child to group life. That is why we stress the four D’s: Dramatics, Dance, Debating and Dating. We are confronted by certain facts. Your delightful Dolly will presently enter an age group where dates, dating, date dress, date book, date etiquette, mean as much to her as, say, business, business connections, business success, means to you, or as much as [smiling] the happiness of my girls means to me…

But we do try to turn our backs on the fog and squarely face the sunshine. To put it briefly, while adopting certain teaching techniques, we are more interested in communication than composition. That is, with due respect to Shakespeare and others, we want our girls to communicate freely with the live world around them rather than to plunge into old musty books. We are still groping perhaps, but we grope intelligently, like a gynecologist feeling a tumor. We think, Dr. Humburg, in organismal and organizational terms…

She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning,

standing four feet ten in one sock. She was

Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school.

She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in

my arms she was always Lolita.

In the town I grew up in there was a street, named after the town, which we would cruise every Friday and Saturday night. Some of the cruisers drove what we then called muscle cars and they liked to race on one of the dimly lit residential side streets; I didn’t go in for that much, I thought it was a drag. But I did enjoy the races in Saugus where they had an eye popping, metal smashing, bone jarring, teeth rattling demolition derby that a co-worker of mine liked to lose in, and I used to watch him.

I’ll have to give Letterman and McChriystal more thought, though I beg your indulgence if I pay scant attention to the Letterman affairs I saw an interesting interview featuring Hilary Clinton and Robert Gates last night and McChyrstal was a topic of discussion. Gates conducted himself admirably, as did Hilary Clinton, if you overlook the uh’s. (I would attend to that were I she.)

hour and day by day decisions immediately and directly affect the lives of your personnel that's quite a bit different from the administration's twice removed sense of -- between Iran and Israel/Palestinians, North Koreans, and China and domestic policy problems -- policy wonks concern.

If that were not the case then the General should resign for NOT giving a good God damn about his personnel.

Yes, at his rank and with his responsibility he should have spoken out if he had overriding ethical concerns that the Administration was apparently ignoring. Those troops are his DIRECT and IMMEDIATE responsibility not twice removed matters of vague interest. As an obvious matter, it is then up to President Obama to continue ignoring his general or to finally pay attention or to ask him to put in for early retirement.

So is President Obama an open screw up in regards to Afghanistan? So far, yes. That might change in the near future as he finally begins to process some of this information between his other overwhelming duties -- duties that G.W. Bush handled with comparative ease. Hmmmmm . . . isn't that interesting?

As for David Letterman, who's a pimple on society's fat backside, to relate the two situations in any way is reaching so far from the logic tree as to fall into the realm of the ludicrous. Why not, instead, compare the General to Roman Polansiki? That would at least get a chuckle as a clear effort at a joke.

to defend the country."

Nope. The President's job is primarily to "preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Says so right there in his oath of office (the only explicit duty so spelled-out beyond the generic "faithfully execute the office of President", hence, clearly, "primary"), as specified by the Founders right there in the Constitution:

US Constitution, Article II, Section 1

Before he enter on the execution of his office, he shall take the following oath or affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States."

I realize you wingers constantly get this wrong even in the face of this dispositive evidence (pretty sure we've had this conversation before!), but it just ain't so.

That is the first oath he is required to take. But the first duty of government has always been to defend its people. For like thousands of years. And the President, as head of the Executive, is our first-line guy on that front. Which is why presidents tend to take more of a role on foreign policy than senators. As such, I think he maybe should pay more attention to active shooting wars than he has hitherto.

Hi, not_abel. I understand the distinction but I still see it as mostly another strawman. Generals with four stars on their shoulders should be used to taking questions from the press and a simple "no comment" is all that was required. McChyrstal went at some length to answer and while it may not have been in his original speech -- it would never have gotten through Pentagon vetting otherwise --he surely anticipated such a question might be asked of him and jumped on his opportunity when given.

You make an interesting point about Obama's lose-lose situation. Sometimes military actions do have shifting political realities associated with them that President must deal with but field commanders do not. I can see how the latter could become frustrated with that situation but winning a war at the cost of future peace/stability is little better than winning a battle at the cost of losing a war. Sadly, your assessment that Obama may have picked the wrong man for this job may be only too true.

Thank you for your reply.

I don't think I need to establish Letterman and McChyrstal as peers in my analogy but merely point out their situations share some of the same factors -- disloyalty, public flap, television. But throw that out, if you wish, and I think my arguments against both remain valid albeit separate.

As for the rest of your reply, I completely understand your position. Once you embrace soldiers in a foreign country directly disobeying their orders and violationg its Consitution in order to remove a sitting President from power just because it may embarass another President in another foreign country, of whom Urquhart coincidentally disapproves, then seeing a general in our own country running off at the mouth to the potential detriment of our President, again of whom Urquhart coincidentally disapproves, must easily seem justified. If McChrystal had only taken Obama at gunpoint out into the streets of Copenhagen and left him there in his pajamas, the man would be a national hero second only to John Wayne and, of course, Sarah Palin, to whom David Letterman was so mean as to wee-wee up her big New York visit. (See how I got another Letterman connection in there?)

Thanks for something.

Your attempted topical sleight of hand (slip-slide from OUR government, i.e., "the President", to generic "government") is of course noted and rejected (why do you hate America?).

If we don't count "form a more perfect Union" (given its narrow historical context of correcting the weakness of the Articles of Confederation), defense comes in only third in the listing of purposes of our government:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, [1] establish Justice, [2] insure domestic Tranquility, [3] provide for the common defense, [4] promote the general Welfare, and [5] secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Gosh, I thought you guys were supposed to be all about "original intent" (oh, right, I momentarily forgot the "when it's convenient to our agenda" clause).

Noting, obviously, defense is A major (critical, in fact) function and duty of our government and element of the President's "job". But, equally obviously, it does not have the primacy your ilk always wants to elevate it to (generally in service to bad policy like belligerent, militaristic, and/or imperialistic foreign policy; or sacrificing our core, defining values to unrealistic, ephemeral illusions re: "national security").

Analogous to another common hawk error: referring to the President as "our" or "the nation's" CiC, when in fact he's CiC of the military . . . only . . . which error leads directly to, e.g., the Telecoms' excuse that their illegal warrantless eavesdropping was ok cuz the Prez told them to and that it was legal (and he's "our" CiC!); which leads in turn to the twisted, anti-American "reasoning" that led Congress to retroactively immunize these crimes, often EXPLICITLY rationalized by the "reasoning" that if they didn't, citizens/corporations might be less willing to violate the law upon Presidential request/order in the future!!!!!!! When (duh!) such deterrence is the whole point of having -- and subsequently enforcing -- such laws in the first place -- not to mention of our entire Constitutional system of Checks and Balances via Separation of Powers.

forever) editorial pages, not the (still one of the better newsgathering/reporting operations around) news pages (a distinction I'd recommend keeping clear, given said godawfulness).

Seemed to me you were straining a bit to make the Letterman-McC parallel work, but otherwise pretty good stuff.

apropos

P.S. "counter-terrorism" (the policy shift being considered) not "counter-insurgency" (the McC/Petraeus strategy requiring, per McC, significant escalation to succeed)

Hi, HAP. Yes, there is a tendency for McChrystal's defenders to paint him as some kind of heroic truth-teller against the always awful Obama. As I said in my top post, this is not about disagreeing with Obama but defying the chain of command in a public way. The Administration has been united and consistent on this point. The Pentagon does not accuse McChyrstal of insubordination but it is not exactly jumping to his defense either.

Perhaps Clinton's uh's are just an example of her "groping intelligently" to convey her ideas.

Thanks for replies here and to other posts of mine.

The argument that either political or military realities have shifted significantly in the bare five months since McChrystal was appointed seems really, really weak to me. Certainly I can't detect any such shift that couldn't/shouldn't have been anticipated.

For example, if Obama didn't expect that public support for the war would wane as time went on, or that the enemy might well achieve some small successes in the short term that would affect public opinion, then he is dangerously stupid.

More likely is that his position and rhetoric were driven by winning the election, that he put himself in a box, and should have been able to see that by mid-May. That puts him in the position of either not having leveled with McChrystal about his intentions, or having hired him with poorly (even negligently) formed intentions. As such, he ought to be more than a little forgiving of his general, unless he is seeking a scapegoat/diversion.

Hi, Gatewood. To argue McChrystal should not be allowed to speak his misgivings and argue them, even with the Commander-In-Chief seems to me a strawman in this case. McChyrstal was given that opportunity before the Security Council and apparently went toe-to-toe with the best of them. For anyone in that room, military or civilian advisor, to go on TV and argue that any way but their way would not only be less successful but lead to chaos and disaster while a decision is still being made would be an equal breach of protocol and duty. Foreign governments and the general public are even further removed from the soldiers' situation than Obama and the DC policy wonks. It was a gratuitous move on McChrystal's part -- disloyal if intention and stupid if not so -- just as was Letterman's on-air apology to his wife.

Nobody will ever doubt that George W. Bush found it easy to be President. One could only wish he were as effective as he were inefficient and certain at making decisions. I said then that I would rather have a President who sometimes dithers and/or changes course when they realize they may have been mistaken than Bush's easy surety any day. I don't retract that preference now that it is apparently the reality.

Thank you for replying.

Hi, tarfuffe. It was indeed an editorial.

I appreciate the Letterman analogy is not exact but that is partly why I used it (in addition to being topical). Sometimes a comparison that stretches forces one to look at a familiar situation from a different viewpoint. One always understands that the situations are not equivalent but, if one is open-minded enough, it need not be completely dismissed for that reason alone.

As for your other catches, you are spot on and thank you for both. Strictly speaking Shinseki was allowed to retire but that was strictly a serendipitous coincidence.

Thanks for your reply.