From the moment the president read the article’s opening paragraph (“’How’d I get screwed into going to this dinner?” demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It’s a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the Hôtel Westminster in Paris”), it was more likely than not that the Afghanistan commander would be sacked.

Officials who participated in the discussions say no single passage was fatal to McChrystal. But the opening was really bad: It made the general sound more like a high-school knucklehead than a thoughtful warrior. As one aide dryly told Playbook: “The effect on allies was definitely a consideration.”…

The best case for keeping the general always revolved around the mission: “McChrystal is the right guy to see it through, and he needs to be chastened but go finish the mission. A change in command would be disruptive and damaging.”

That view never gained traction, and there was some relief when it became clear that the consensus was: “We’re better off without him.” Aides were concerned about “the atmosphere of this having happened” and the prospect of “continuing with all of that stuff in the background.” McChrystal already had two strikes: He had previous transgressions (including the London speech in which he dismissed out of hand an approach to Afghanistan that could have wound up being the strategy). Those had “a cumulative effect” and had “taken their toll,” as various aides put it. And we aren’t exactly rolling through Kandahar, so he wasn’t walking on water in the field, which was also in the back of some folks’ minds.