The ‘Jolene doctrine’: retired US army general likens Trump foreign policy to Dolly Parton song

The ‘Jolene doctrine’: retired US army general likens Trump foreign policy to Dolly Parton song Stanley McChrystal said White House has a ‘we should do because we can’ approach to international relations 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 because we can” – invoking the lyrics of the Dolly Parton classic Jolene to emphasize the point. Stanley McChrystal delivered those remarks on Friday at Tulane University’s New Orleans book festival during a fireside chat hosted by the editor-in-chief of the Atlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg, who asked in part about US military strikes Trump has ordered in Nigeria, Venezuela and Iran since Christmas. “I’m a big fan of Dolly Parton – do you remember her song Jolene?” McChrystal replied, 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 what we can do, we should do because we can. And I think the world is starting to view us that way.” McChrystal’s commentary about what he dubbed Trump’s “Jolene doctrine” is bound to carry weight in many political circles, as the retired general spent his entire career in the US army upon graduating from its West Point academy in 1976. Later, as a special forces officer, he was credited with prominent roles in the US’s capture of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in 2003 as well as the 2006 killing of the al-Qaida leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. McChrystal subsequently commanded US and Nato military alliance troops in Afghanistan for a little more than a year beginning in June 2009 during Barack Obama’s presidency. He ultimately had to resign from that post after making disparaging remarks to a Rolling Stone magazine journalist profiling him about the US’s civilian leadership,...