Gen. Jack Keane (Ret.) said on ABC’s This Week this morning that if he were Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal — the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan who’s asked for 40,000 additional troops for the war there — and President Obama did not agree to his request, he’d resign.
If you’re a general on the ground, and you believe the recommendation you’ve made is the winning recommendation in terms of strategy, that’ll accomplish the goals that you’ve been assigned, and then you’re told that you cannot execute that and ask the troops to go out and do something else that you don’t believe will accomplish those goals — that gets very difficult in terms of a moral dilemma, asking the troops to do something that you believe is going to fail.
George Stephanopoulos asked Keane if he’d resign under those circumstances.
“Probably, yes,” Keane said. “Under those circumstances, yes.”