McChrystal's a Bonehead

Stanley McChrystal’s Rolling Stone stunner has pundits baffled—no one can understand how he let this happen. Here’s what they’re saying:

• Joe Klein of Time defends the “McChrystal I know” as “an extraordinary man” who, unfortunately, has no PR skills and is “incapable of fudging the truth.” He’ll have to be fired, “and it is a real tragedy, because Stanley McChrystal is precisely the sort of man who should be leading American troops in battle.”

• “What the heck was McChrystal thinking?” asks Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic. Well, we sort of know: He’s fed up with longtime enemy Karl Eikenberry and the White House’s distrust. But it’s an awful move leading into December’s policy review.
• The worst part is, McChrystal and company—or “Team America,” as they call themselves—have no substantive complaints, notes Spencer Ackerman on his blog. It’s “actually just immature and arrogant snipes at how annoying” the administration is.
• But Daniel Foster of the National Review thinks firing McChrystal would be a disaster for Obama. “It would make his administration look petty and prideful,” and undermine its Afghanistan credibility—which is all “imported from McChrystal.”

(More Stanley McChrystal stories.)