McChrystal's fatal error

"When you're dealing with the press, you're playing with a loaded gun." So said my first ambassador many years ago, and truer words were never spoken. General Stanley McChrystal, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, would surely have learned that long ago, and the unhappy results of his previous intemperate public remarks - which once earned him a personal, one-on-one rebuke from Barack Obama, the US president - should have served to underscore the lesson. Apparently, they did not. This time, it would appear, the self-inflicted wound suffered as a result of the unseemly candor of the general and his staff in the presence of the Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings is going to prove mortal. But in the midst of the current Washington feeding frenzy, let us pause for a little perspective.