Poor General Stanley McChrystal, America’s commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, it seems, sure learned the hard way. He was booted as America’s top commander in Afghanistan after Rolling Stone magazine published an article stuffed full of colorful quotes from the General.  Bloomberg reports the General offered to resign over those comments and his criticism of US administration officials over their handling of the war in Afghanistan. He will now be replaced by Gen. David Petraeus who has been in charge of Iraq since 2007.

Now, if you have been living under a rock and wondering who the aforementioned Stanley McChrystal is (apart from being a Badass ), Rolling Stone magazine had this helpful description:

McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a “Jedi” commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn’t care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”) He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. “The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal,” says a British officer who serves in Kabul. “You’d be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like ‘Who the fuck is that?’ And it’s fucking Stan McChrystal.”

He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. (“There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.”)

Sure, Stan’s the man. But apparently, Stan seemed to have some trouble keeping his gob shut as Rolling Stone reporter Michael Hastings trailed him for his piece. With Hastings around, Stan’s spat out his disdain for Washington’s top officials–not even sparing Ol’ Barry Obama. Here’s what an aide told the mag:

It was a 10-minute photo op,” says an adviser to McChrystal. “Obama clearly didn’t know anything about him, who he was. Here’s the guy who’s going to run his fucking war, but he didn’t seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed.”

Huffpo had more on the General’s open disdain for Richard Holbrooke, the official responsible for reintegrating the Taliban.

McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. “The Boss says he’s like a wounded animal,” says a member of the general’s team. “Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he’s going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He’s a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can’t just have someone yanking on Shit.”

AND…

“Oh not another e-mail from Holbrooke,” [McChrystal] groans. “I don’t even want to open it.” He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.

“Make sure you don’t get any of that on your leg,” an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.

The General also turns into a sulky child while on an official visit to Paris to talk to French allies and sell the Afghanistan plan to NATO.

“I’d rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner,” McChrystal says

He pauses a beat.

“Unfortunately,” he adds, “no one in this room could do it.”
With that, he’s out the door.

“Who’s he going to dinner with?” I ask one of his aides.

“Some French minister,” the aide tells me. “It’s fucking gay.”.

Sure, Gen. McChrystal, tell us how you REALLY feel. Obama was reportedly quite angry when he read the article. Dismissing the General, he however reitereated that it was just a change of personnel and not policy in Afghanistan. The war still continues.

Oh yes. The war in Afghanistan–anyone remember that?

"I come in Peace." 2009 Nobel Peace Prize Winner President Obama

Oct 6th  marked the 8th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.

On Oct 8th, 17 people were killed in a car bomb attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul.

On Oct 10th,  5 sweet men in Norway decided President Obama must be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not so much for his “actions”, but for his “intentions.”

Oh, Sweet Sweet Norway!

In two days, President Obama travels to Oslo to pick up his big gold star – just for not being President Bush.

We know that the U.N. doesn’t smell of sulphur anymore, but FYI, the wars are still on in Afghanistan and Iraq,

Pakistan is still being overrun by militants, Iran declared it has a nuclear facilty and China wont re-evaluate the Yen.

So, what exactly was Obama being awarded for?

The Peace Prize has just served as fodder to Obama’s domestic critics who treat him like a snake oil salesman, who rests more on his charisma than achieving anything substantial.

A rhetorically gifted charmer who has just watched as the health care debate spirals out of control, unemployment peaks at almost 10% and according to Steve Kornacki of the Observer, a “first term Middle-East push, that has achieved virtually nothing.” Kornacki also mentions a rather liberal Facebook friend of his who wrote on her Facebook page: “I now have every hope of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m a great speech writer and I’m full of good intentions.”

I think that’s a great indicator of how even liberals are slightly embarassed by the whole deal.

It’s rather odd because it’s the same Nobel Committee that waited for 21 years after President Carter left office to finally proffer him the prize.

Maybe, they should have waited a while for Obama to emerge from the several morasses he is in, to award him the prize. Or maybe this is just Norway’s way of giving the Prez an “A” for effort.

Read more about the Nobel embarassement here, here and here

During her deployment in Baghdad, Sandra Lee was raped twice by a fellow American soldier. Back home, she works to draw attention to the rising cases of sexual assault within the ranks. (Photo Credit: Peter Ash Lee)

On Veterans Day, as President Obama laid a wreath at Arlington National Cemetery, he did so with the full knowledge that for Americans serving across the world, the face of war had changed forever.

No longer are our wars overseas fought solely by men—but also, by an increasing number of women.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the first conflicts in which tens of thousands of American military women have lived, worked and fought for prolonged periods, cultivating a new breed of female combatants.

Yet a startling congressional report by the Department of Defense (released in March) revealed that one in three female combatants experience rape or attempted rape during their military service. The data indicated that there were 2,923 sexual assaults reported in fiscal 2008—a nearly 8 percent spike over the previous year.

In The Lonely Soldier: The Private War of Women Serving in Iraq, author Helen Benedict describes sexual assault against female service members in Iraq. As one soldier explains in the book, “There are only three kinds of females the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke.”

One 21-year-old soldier Benedict profiled took to carrying a knife with her at all times. “The knife wasn’t for the Iraqis,” said Spc. Mickiela Montoya, who served in Iraq with the National Guard in 2005. “It was for the guys on my own side,” she told the author, who interviewed more than 20 Iraq veterans for her book.

Staff Sergeant Sandra Lee, who served in Iraq from December 2003 to October 2004, knows exactly what Montoya is talking about.

Raped twice by a fellow soldier during her deployment in Baghdad, Lee, 33, has been drawing attention to the rising cases of sexual assault within the ranks.

Working with Veterans for Peace, a nonprofit organization based in St. Louis, Missouri, Lee kicked off their “Military Awareness” campaign in October by making her first public statement about the assaults.

That statement is documented on YouTube. On October 13, during a march in New York City, Lee said, “How could I let this happen to me? I feel stupid, I feel ashamed, I feel shattered,” she continued, recalling her emotions after getting raped. Her voice trembled as she expressed her shame and her failure to report the crime.

After several years of silence, Lee is determined to help other women cope with sexual assault by talking openly about it. “This person,” says Lee, referring to her rapist, “was someone I knew and trusted. It was a friend and a trusted relationship.”

On a recent evening in Manhattan, Lee, a trained opera singer, jokes that she can hold her high notes just as well as she handles her service weapon.

In New York’s glitzy theater district, she could not be farther away from Iraq’s bombs and mortars, but diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder upon her return, the war still rages in her mind.

“There are only three kinds of females the men let you be in the military: a bitch, a ho or a dyke.”

Lee, deployed as part of the Civil Affairs brigade in 2003, was one of the thousands of soldiers in Iraq who despite holding non-combat roles, ended up performing dangerous duties, including looking for improvised explosive devices (commonly referred to as IEDs or roadside bombs) and tasked with rebuilding infrastructure in a war zone.

When Lee first heard about her deployment to Baghdad she recalls her jubilant reaction. “My first reaction was ‘Great!’ Iraq was the place to be!” she says. But when her unit landed in the ravaged city, reality hit home. “There can be no training on what to expect [in a war zone],” she says. “It’s so unpredictable. You can’t train for that.”

Lee was overcome with exhaustion, coping not just with the physical toll of being in Iraq, but also with the mental fatigue of being on guard 24/7.

She recalls an atmosphere where inappropriate remarks and unwanted attention from the male soldiers was the norm. “The harassment is shocking!” exclaims Lee. “It is unreal.”

Then one evening in 2004, a male colleague raped her. It was the first of two such incidents. Lee kept her silence.

Lee’s story echoes the findings of an annual Pentagon report to Congress earlier this year, stating 165 instances of reported sexual assault during a six-month period from the Iraq and Afghanistan military campaigns alone; a 26 percent rise over the previous year.

Despite the assaults, Lee, bogged down by shame and a fear of retribution, did not report the incidents to her superiors. “How will they judge me?” she recalls thinking, explaining her reluctance.

Female soldiers can report rape in the military in two ways. “Restricted reporting” allows a victim to report rape anonymously and seek medical and emotional counseling. But restricted reporting does not trigger an official investigation, leaving victims wary that their attackers will find out about the complaint and come after them, analysts say.

Under “unrestricted reporting,” victims can go directly to the commanding officer of their unit and register their complaint. But most of the commanders are male and as a result, notes retired U.S. Army Reserve Colonel Ann Wright, less than 8 percent of reported rapes result in prosecution.

“Even when the perpetrators are convicted, they seldom go to jail for rape,” adds Wright, who is a member of Veterans for Peace. “The atmosphere in the military is looking the other way and not forcefully prosecuting. In their eyes, the value of a man’s career is higher than a woman’s.”

Due to shame, fear and low prosecution rates, less than 20 percent of assaulted female soldiers report these crimes.
For victims, however, the trauma barely ends there.

In an institution where esprit de corps and camaraderie are the name of the game, the victim and perpetrator continue to serve side-by-side.

Due to shame, fear and low prosecution rates, less than 20 percent of assaulted female soldiers report these crimes. For victims, however, the trauma barely ends there.

In an institution where esprit de corps and camaraderie are the name of the game, the victim and perpetrator continue to serve side-by-side.

“The difficult thing is to turn around and defend this person,” says Lee, referring to her rapist, with whom she continued to serve in Iraq for an entire year. “I felt awkward, uncomfortable.”

When these victims return home from duty, depression sets in. “They have anger, mistrust, and go into periods of isolation,” says Wright. “They start going down a dangerous spiral.”

Which is exactly what happened to Lee. In October 2004, she returned home, harboring her dark secret. She went back to school in Portland to continue pursuing her degree in international relations.

In class, Lee was angry and irritable. Off campus, she felt agitated, constantly sweeping her eyes to the sides of the road while driving, mentally checking for bombs as she’d done in Iraq. She withdrew completely and didn’t share her anxieties with family or friends.

Lee continued to train as a reservist with her unit in Portland, but it wasn’t until 2007 that her symptoms were recognized as post-traumatic stress disorder.

Lee finally admitted to her doctors that she was raped. All the emotions she’d suppressed over the years came flooding back.

Now, Lee bristles with anger over how the military is “sweeping this issue under the rug.” Though she still has not officially reported her rapist, she is urging victims to speak openly—as she has. As Lee confronts her past, she is also currently engaged in a dispute with the military over disability benefits and worries she might be “other than honorably discharged.”

But she says she has no regrets. “I don’t disdain the military,” says Lee. “My job was fulfilling. I went to Iraq. I was part of history!” she exclaims, even as her eyes well up with tears.

So what can the U.S. military do to prevent these alarming rises in sexual assault?

“There needs to be more than a PowerPoint presentation,” Lee says, referring to the mandatory sexual assault awareness training that many soldiers find tedious.

Wright of Veterans for Peace, meanwhile, calls for greater prosecution.

As more women continue to volunteer for the army, Wright cautions them to be cognizant of what they are signing up for. “Women are not warned that they could be raped in the army,” she says. “Women are being treated improperly by the institution, only because they don’t press charges. It is high time the institution started acting responsibly towards this huge sector of the population.”

Social scientist Dr. Laura Miller of the non-partisan, nonprofit think tank, The Rand Corporation, emphasizes that female soldiers need to talk openly about their assault to break the circle of shame.

“The role has expanded in terms of women who are serving in the military,” she says. “Women are now more integrated; they’re in fighter aircrafts, combat ships. But the military is still disproportionately male.

“Being in a war zone is not like being on a base in the U.S., where you have cameras, lights,” Miller adds. “In a deployed environment, you have a lot of people coming and going, you are exposed to each other 24/7, so it provides opportunities for people with those proclivities.”

Today, there are more than 216,000 women serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, making up almost 11.3 percent of the nearly 2 million U.S. active duty and National Guard troops and reservists sent to both war zones.

Many of these mothers, daughters, sisters and wives will eventually return home—some scarred by the violence of war and mutilated bodies. Others, by the trauma of sexual assault.

Some soldiers, like Lee, remain haunted by both.

This piece first appeared in Koream Journal – a magazine on Korean American affairs.

Photo Credit: Marcn (flickr)

Oct 6th  marked the 8th anniversary of the war in Afghanistan.  On Oct 8th, 17 people were killed in a car bomb attack outside the Indian Embassy in Kabul and on the tenth, 5 sweet men in Norway decided President Obama must be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, not so much for his “actions”, but for his “intentions.” Oh, Sweet Sweet Norway! A big Gold Star to Obama – just for not being President Bush.

We know that the U.N. doesn’t smell of sulphur anymore, but FYI, the wars are still on in Afghanistan and Iraq, Pakistan is still being overrun by militants, Iran just declared it has a nuclear facilty and China wont re-evaluate the Yen. So, what exactly was Obama being awarded for?

The Peace Prize has just served as fodder to Obama’s domestic critics who treat him like a snake oil salesman, who rests more on his charisma than achieving anything substantial.  A rhetorically gifted charmer who has just watched as the health care debate spirals out of control, unemployment peaks at almost 10% and according to Steve Kornacki of the Observer, a “first term Middle-East push, that has achieved virtually nothing.” Kornacki also mentions a rather liberal Facebook friend of his who wrote on her Facebook page: “I now have every hope of winning the Nobel Peace Prize. I’m a great speech writer and I’m full of good intentions.”

I think that’s a great indicator of how even liberals are slightly embarrassed by the whole deal. It’s rather odd because it’s the same Nobel Committee that waited for 21 years after President Carter left office to finally proffer him the prize.

Maybe, they should have waited a while for Obama to emerge from the several morasses he is in, to award him the prize. Or maybe this is just Norway’s way of giving the Prez an “A” for effort.

Read what others had to say about Obama’s win here, here and here