In September 2009, General McChrystal allowed a "Washington Post" reporter to accompany him and a seven-member NATO fact-finding team to the otherwise closed-door meetings with German troops and Afghan officials investigating a deadly Bundeswehr-ordered US airstrike on two Taliban-hijacked tanker trucks. Jumping on this golden opportunity, the "Post" promptly published an insider's account of the on-going NATO investigation in its Sunday edition, just two days after the air strike had happened, relaying estimates concerning the associated Taliban and civilian casualty figures, etc.
German
political leaders and senior military officers were outraged at
McChrystal's
decision to bring a journalist to these internal, classified briefings,
which
took place just hours after the air strike. "It stinks to high heaven,"
one
unnamed Bundeswehr officer told the "Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung"
newspaper, which
also reported that German commanders accused the US
army of "deliberately leaking misinformation about an ongoing
investigation".
Chancellor Merkel was certainly not happy about the "Washington Post"
story
either and sharply criticized those who immediately pointed the
finger at Germany's military leadership, stressing that she opposed
making
premature judgments and jumping to conclusions before all the results of
the NATO
investigation into civilian casualties, etc. were known.
In
the months following the Kunduz air strike, General McChrystal was able
to
repair strained relations with Berlin and also seemed to have
established a
good personal connection with German defense minister Karl-Theodor zu
Guttenberg. However, the bottom-line is: The "Rolling Stone" story is
not the
first time that General McChrystal has mishandled the media by giving a
journalist unwarranted access to internal meetings and discussions. The
first
time around, of course, there were no immediate negative consequences
for
McChrystal, who may have wanted to use the "Washington Post" story to
"reprimand" the Germans over the Bundeswehr's perceived violation of his
zero
civilian casualties policy. Whatever McChrystal's ultimate motivation,
what
goes around comes around and last time I checked, the term
"Schadenfreude" was
German.
Ulf
Gartzke is a Visiting Scholar at Georgetown University's BMW Center for
German
and European Studies. This article reflects his personal opinion.
- 5
June 27, 2010
Olga Kolesnichenko, freelance journalist, Gold Contributor (124)
General McChrystal has more than dozen decorations and also general has got 5 high-level diplomas: United States Military Academy; United States Naval War College; Salve Regina University; United States Naval Command and Staff College; Senior Service College Fellowship; John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Link to my article-2009
http://www.vpk-news.ru/40-306/2009-05-02-13-24-04/3175
And I wonder why German general isn't able to be appointed to the position of head of ISAF in terms of Germany big contribution into Afghanistan mission?