“All these men, I’d die for them. And they’d die for me.”

This is the quote that Lucian K. Truscott IV took issue with from the Rolliing Stone article on Gen. MacChrystal.  In a NY Times editorial he writes about his 1967 meeting at West Point with Will Lang, a reporter who did a Life Magazine cover story about his grandfather, Lucian K. Truscott Jr., in WW II. 

His complaint is that

For too long, the Army has been led by sentimental men, by peacocks in starched fatigues and strutting ascetics surrounded by public relations teams. But the Army doesn’t need sentimental generals; it needs generals who can give the kind of difficult and deadly orders that win wars.

It's an interesting opinion piece (and short so read it yourself), but I'm not sure that he, given his source of 'truth' is his grandfather, isn't also being sentimental.  His is one perspective to ponder, but certainly not the only one.

There seem to be no shortage of opinions, but if you read the original Rolling Stone article you can form your own.  It does sound like MacChrystal thought a bit too highly of his own abilities.  When he says (about the people in DC without Afghan combat experience) that they don't have a clue, he seems to not be considering that he, without DC combat experience, may not have a clue of their world and that his world is just one of many, many worlds the President has to make decisions about.