McChrystal accuses Obama buddy of covering 'his flank'

Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, has leveled an open and unprecedented attack on the current U.S. ambassador, Karl Eikenberry, whom he accuses of betraying him by firing off cables to Washington critical of the U.S. war strategy.

Eikenberry, a former Army lieutenant general, sent two cables last November, apparently without McChrystal's knowledge.

Not only did the cables criticize McChrystal's recommendation of a proposed troop buildup out of concern that it would make the Karzai government too dependent on the U.S., but they complained about Afghan President Hamid Karzai and his government and the state of its military.

McChrystal's criticism of Eikenberry is to be published in an article in Rolling Stone magazine Friday. The article depicts McChrystal as being on the outs with people at the White House, including President Obama. McChrystal was publicly criticized for being too open in his request for additional troops.

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The upcoming article names administration figures McChrystal has criticized, including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vice President Joseph Biden.

The article reportedly points out McChrystal had taken control of the war "by never taking his eye off the real enemy: the wimps in the White House." The list apparently includes Eikenberry.

McChrystal now has been summoned back to Washington.

He was appointed to stop a quickly deterioriating situation in the U.S. war in Afghanistan as the Taliban had begun to regain territory once under government control.

A counterinsurgency expert, McChrystal had requested an additional 40,000 troops to confront the Taliban and al-Qaida. Last October, when McChrystal sought the additional troops, there was considerable hesitancy in Washington to act on the request by an administration that preferred to avoid any further troop buildup.

"It is simply premature to consider additional resources until Gen. McChrystal's assessment has been fully reviewed and discussed by the president and his team," Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said at the time.

Obama's delay in deciding on the McChrystal request led to frustration within the military. Ultimately, the president reluctantly approved an increase of 30,000 U.S. troops, with the remainder coming from other countries who are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

The troop-increase approval was coupled with a requirement to begin bringing the troops back to the U.S. in July 2011. With the current difficulties in defeating the Taliban, the deadline may not be reached.

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"I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before," McChrystal reportedly said. "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.'"

McChrystal's open criticism of Eikenberry is reminiscent of the way the former Army general and now U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan operated when he was the desk officer at the Pentagon covering China during the administration of President Bill Clinton. At the time, he was a full colonel.

Former Defense Department staff members who worked with Eikenberry were aware of his approach of saying one thing to people but doing something else. It was his way of "getting on the bandwagon to look good to the policymakers," one former defense official complained.

Critics of Eikenberry said that he took the expedient approach that looked out more for his career than what was in the best interest of national security.

Indeed, Eikenberry's support for the new Clinton approach toward China at the time won him the position of U.S. defense attaché to Beijing and an immediate promotion to brigadier, or one-star, general.

Critics complained that Eikenberry, while at the Pentagon, undermined a very well-defined policy toward limiting certain militarily critical technologies to China at a time when the Clinton administration sought to liberalize those controls to improve commercial trade for major contributors.

Eikenberry translated that policy approach of pushing for the liberalization of export controls in so-called special-mission areas that defined U.S. strategic concerns over China then and now.

The special-mission areas for which technologies were to be limited included antisubmarine and electronic warfare, nuclear weapons and their delivery system, aerospace and power projection.

Eikenberry then pressed for a policy to allow exports only to good end-users, which proved to be difficult due to limited intelligence on Chinese entities in a closed society.

Nevertheless, expansion of commercial relations with China at the time was paramount under the Clinton administration, which granted more waivers to the export of militarily critical technologies to China that also saw some of the most serious diversions of the technologies to enhance China's intercontinental-ballistic-missile capability.

The technologies also enhanced China's computer capabilities to the point that it has one of the fastest supercomputers in the world after the United States. The technologies that were allowed to be exported also improved China's power projection and blue-navy capabilities.

During the period when Eikenberry was in the Pentagon, the U.S. enacted some of the greatest export liberalization of technologies, which just now are beginning to seriously challenge U.S. strategic capabilities.