Pinch on McChrystal’s Asceticism and Martial Spirit

In a New York Times piece examining some of General McChrystal’s more austere habits, William Pinch,  professor of history, discusses from a martial perspective McChrystal’s habits of sleeping little, eating one meal a day, working out to exhaustion and yet maintaining the energy and focus to run the Afghanistan campaign. Pinch says such methods of “self-denial as…a cultivation of power” are consistent with the warrior ethos of the past.