The McChrystal PR Campaign Goes Awry

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So, um, how are things going in Afghanistan?

An article out this week in “Rolling Stone” magazine depicts Gen. Stanley McChrystal as a lone wolf on the outs with many important figures in the Obama administration and unable to convince even some of his own soldiers that his strategy can win the war. A band of McChrystal’s profane, irreverent aides are quoted mocking Vice President Joe Biden and Richard Holbrooke, the special U.S. representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

….The article claims McChrystal has seized control of the war “by never taking his eye off the real enemy: The wimps in the White House.”

Ouch. The Wall Street Journal describes the piece this way:

Comments in the article attributed to anonymous McChrystal aides are particularly harsh towards some senior members of the Obama administration, including National Security Adviser James Jones, and other leading politicians, like Sens. John Kerry (D., Mass.) and John McCain (R., Ariz). They also make some unflattering references to President Barack Obama himself, saying the president didn’t seem to know who McChrystal was when he appointed him to run the war early last year.

Apparently McChrystal’s biggest beef is with Karl Eikenberry, which is hardly surprising since Eikenberry leaked a cable last year that essentially said McChrystal’s strategy for Afghanistan was hopeless. Marc Ambinder provides some background here, and ends with this: “Within hours after today’s Rolling Stone story broke, McChrystal was called by the White House, the Secretary of Defense, and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. They were not happy.” I don’t suppose they were.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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