I fully concur with your comments, Jen, and wanted to add some additional thoughts on Michael O’Hanlon’s excellent piece in the Washington Post, in which he writes:

Some might agree with all this yet say that McChrystal still had no business wading into policy waters at this moment. It is true that commanders, as a rule, should not do so. But when truly bad ideas or those already tried and discredited are debated as serious proposals, they do not deserve intellectual sanctuary. McChrystal is personally responsible for the lives of 100,000 NATO troops who are suffering severe losses partially as a result of eight years of a failed counterterrorism strategy under a different name. He has a right to speak if a policy debate becomes too removed from reality. Put another way, we need to hear from him because he understands this reality far better than most in Washington.

Many of those criticizing McChrystal wish, in retrospect, that our military command in 2002-03 had been more vocal in opposing Donald Rumsfeld’s planning for the Iraq invasion, which assumed a minimal need for post-invasion stabilizing forces. This was an unusually bad idea that military leadership went along with, at least publicly, partly out of a sense that they had no prerogative to intercede. The result was one of the most botched operations in U.S. military history until the 2007 surge partially salvaged things.

One of our problems in the Bush administration was that we had a string of generals in key positions in Iraq — including Ricardo Sanchez and George Casey — who were advocating the wrong strategy (what became known as the “light footprint”). But O’Hanlon is quite right; some military commanders didn’t speak out when, in retrospect, their voices could have made a difference. It was our failure that they didn’t feel they could do so without going cross-wise of the secretary of defense.

Having worked in three administrations, I understand the agitation that a story like McChrystal’s can cause. But having worked in three administrations I can also testify that it’s imperative that there be open, honest, and rigorous debate; that different points of view be considered; that the strongest arguments against any case be amassed and made; and that what people should say ought to be judged on the merits rather than on the short-term political furor it creates. That’s fairly easy to say from the outside, when you’re not being pounded by the political class or feeling as if you have been boxed into a corner.

But what matters in the end is getting the policy right — and if a painful process leads to a better outcome in the end, it’s more than worth it. That’s easy to forget when you’re working at the highest levels of government and in the line of fire. But it’s precisely because you’re working at the highest level of government and in the line of fire that those lessons need to learned, internalized, and acted on.

If I were working in the Obama administration, I imagine that my first reaction to General McChrystal’s comments would have been negative. But I hope, on reflection, that I would see something else as well — that while McChrystal’s comments may have made life more difficult in the short run for the Obama administration, McChrystal has, in fact, done the administration and the public a favor. Stanley McChrystal deserves to be praised, not criticized, for his candor. We need more of it, at every level of government. It helps, of course, that he also happens to be quite right in his recommendation.

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