McChrystal violated not just protocol but Obama tenets on media management

For a cerebral president intent on projecting a united front of seriousness to the public, the story couldn't have been further off message.

The general leading the grim war in Afghanistan presented himself not as a hardened warrior-scholar but as the military's most decorated consumer of Bud Light Lime. When Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal opened his inner sanctum to a Rolling Stone reporter, he violated more than just the military chain of command. The general broke core tenets of President Obama's code of conduct: When it comes to the media, keep your guard up, your mouth shut and control of the situation. Instead, McChrystal and his merry band of Team America comrades sank their ship with astonishingly loose lips, revealed that the "lively debate" in the administration's foreign policy upper echelon may be a euphemism for jagged division and showed that high rank may be evidence of valor but not worldliness.