Stanley McChrystal Becomes "Something of a Leftist"

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Jon Schwarz

Jon Schwarz is editor of MichaelMoore.com and was research producer for 'Capitalism: A Love Story.' He's also contributed to the New Yorker, New York Times, Atlantic, Wall Street Journal, Slate, Saturday Night Live and NPR.

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March 3rd, 2013 8:17 AM

Stanley McChrystal Becomes "Something of a Leftist"

By Jon Schwarz

In the new Israeli documentary The Gatekeepers, one of the former heads of the Shin Bet says that for people like him who've seen Israeli foreign policy up close, "when you retire, you become something of a leftist."

According to a new interview with Stanley McChrystal, it looks like that's happening to him too:

MCCHRYSTAL: ...although to the United States, a drone strike seems to have very little risk and very little pain, at the receiving end, it feels like war. Americans have got to understand that. If we were to use our technological capabilities carelessly – I don’t think we do, but there’s always the danger that you will – then we should not be upset when someone responds with their equivalent, which is a suicide bomb in Central Park, because that’s what they can respond with.

Moreover, this is similar to what Colin Powell said in his autobiography in 1996 after he retired from the U.S. military:

McFarlane, now in Beirut, persuaded the President to have the battleship U.S.S. New Jersey start hurling 16-inch shells into the mountains above Beirut, in World War II style, as if we were softening up the beaches on some Pacific atoll prior to an invasion. What we tend to overlook in such situations is that other people will react much as we would... And since they could not reach the battleship, they found a more vulnerable target, the exposed Marines at the airport.

Who knows, at this rate John Brennan – who while in power can only hem and haw about how "al-Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland" – may be saying this seven minutes after he retires from running the CIA.

Of course, McChrystal left out some pretty important things:

1. We already had the attempted car bombing in Times Square by Faisal Shahzad, which Shahzad explicitly claimed was revenge for "the drone strikes in Somalia and Yemen and in Pakistan" (plus other U.S. foreign policy).

2. Manhattan has already experienced some extremely successful suicide attacks, though they were about five miles south of Central Park. It would be interesting to find out whether McChrystal believes there was some connection between those attacks and U.S. foreign policy. If so, he'd be more than just something of a leftist.