The retired US Army general who once led NATO forces in Afghanistan says the bellicose foreign policy Donald Trump has pursued during his second presidency can be summed up as “we should do it because we can,” invoking lyrics from Dolly Parton’s classic Jolene to emphasize the point.
Stanley McChrystal delivered those comments Friday at the Tulane University book festival in New Orleans during a fireside chat hosted by Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg, who asked in part about the U.S. military strikes Trump has ordered in Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran since Christmas.
“I’m a big Dolly Parton fan. Do you remember her song Jolene?” McChrystal responded, referring to the country star’s Grammy-nominated 1973 hit. “This poor wife says, ‘Jolene, please don’t take my man; don’t take him just because you can.’
“And that’s what worries me: I think we might be in a period where we think that what we can do, we should do because we can. And I think the world is starting to see us that way.”
McChrystal’s comment about what he called Trump’s “Jolene doctrine” will surely carry weight in many political circles, as the retired general spent his entire career in the US military after graduating from its West Point academy in 1976.
Later, as a special forces officer, he was credited with a leading role in the US capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003, as well as the 2006 assassination of Al Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.
McChrystal subsequently commanded U.S. military alliance and NATO troops in Afghanistan for just over a year beginning in June 2009, during President Barack Obama’s presidency. He ultimately had to resign from that position after making disparaging comments to a Rolling Stone journalist, profiling him about America’s civilian leadership, including Obama and his eventual Democratic successor in the White House, Joe Biden, the vice president at the time.
Obama replaced McChrystal with General David Petraeus, who later resigned as director of the US Central Intelligence Agency over an extramarital affair with his biographer.
The Atlantic reported later Friday that a White House spokesperson responded to McChrystal’s comments by saying the president had restored America’s “place as the leader of the free world.”
Among other things, the publication also quoted Jay Sexton, a historian of American foreign relations at the University of Missouri, as saying: “I think the Trump team is acting like an unrestrained Jolene: They are doing things because they can.
“But the bad thing is using the metaphor: Jolene is likely to regret doing what she thinks she can do.”
The US Christmas attacks in northwestern Nigeria targeted what the Trump administration described as fighters from the Islamic State terrorist group, although there were questions about which group was specifically targeted and the impact of the operation.
Then, on January 3, the United States attacked Venezuela and seized its ruler, Nicolás Maduro, whom Trump’s justice department had charged with drugs, weapons and narcoterrorism.
Israel and the United States then jointly attacked Iran on February 28, killing the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
The ensuing conflict has been marked by conflicting signals about what Trump would consider a victory, confusing his electorate, his allies and his enemies. The president has also spent time trying to deflect responsibility for the bombing of a girls’ school in southern Iran, which killed at least 175 people, mostly children.
Amid all that, Trump renewed his threats to seize Greenland for the United States with military action if necessary. He ultimately walked back those threats, but was seen as having strained US relations with its NATO allies.
Goldberg told McChrystal on Friday that he feared the world hasn’t heard the end of Trump’s fixation with Greenland.
“I firmly believe in allies,” McChrystal said in turn. “To me, those are the kind of sacred relationships that are essential for any nation. We will never be powerful enough to do it alone.”
