McChrystal Controversy and Afghanistan Policy

Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings, whose article put General Stanley McChrystal in the White House hot seat, joins us from Afghanistan.

Uproar over the top US commander in Afghanistan today.  A big piece in Rolling Stone has Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his top staff sniping all over the White House and their Obama administration bosses.

It’s contemptuous.  Derisive. It has the McChrystal crew trash talking Joe Biden, Richard Holbrooke, Ambassador Karl Eikenberry – the President, too.

McChrystal’s ordered home and at the White House today.  His fate, and a troubled war effort, all on the line.  It’s a rough moment.

This hour, On Point: The headline is “Runaway General.”  The fate of McChrystal and the Afghan war.Guests:

Michael Hastings, Contributing Editor at Rolling Stone. His forthcoming article is "The Runaway General." He joins us from Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Eliot Cohen, Professor of Strategic Studies; and Director of Strategic Studies Program at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. He is author of "Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Wartime Leadership."

Robert Killebrew,  Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security.  Killebrew is a retired Army colonel who served 30 years in a variety of assignments that included Special Forces, tours in the 82nd and 101st Airborne Divisions, XVIII Airborne Corps, high-level war planning assignments and instructor duty at the Army War College.

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, U.S. Army-Ret. He was chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell from 2002 to 2005. A former director of the U.S. Marine Corps War College at Quantico, Virginia, he’s now a professor of national security studies at George Washington University and of government and policy at the College of William & Mary.