University | 2:11 am | January 9, 2013 | By

McChrystal appears on ‘The Daily Show’

Former Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal appeared on Tuesday's episode of "The Daily Show."
Former Commander of U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Stanley McChrystal appeared on Tuesday's episode of "The Daily Show." Photo by The Daily Show.

General Stanley McChrystal stepped into Jon Stewart’s line of fire tonight on “The Daily Show,” making the televised appearance to promote his new memoir, “My Share of the Task: A Memoir.”

From the onset, McChrystal — who is also a senior fellow at Yale’s Jackson Institute of Global Affairs and will teach the popular “Leadership” seminar this spring — traded jokes with Stewart before moving on to larger discussions, including gun control.

“Sir, you served for many years in our armed forces heroically … but I don’t want to minimize the fact that I’m doing the show tonight with a cold,” Stewart began with a laugh. “I’ll let the audience decide who’s the real hero tonight.”

Stewart then played a clip of Texas Rep. Louie Gohmert (R), who explained in the clip that assault weapons should not be banned because of the equally “massive number” of people that are killed by hammers. When asked for his opinion on gun control, McChrystal explained that he supported limiting access to certain types of guns.

“If you’ve been on the battlefield you’ve probably carried an M4 Carbine … it does terrible damage. It’s supposed to,” McChrystal explained. “I don’t want them on our streets. I don’t want them in our schools. I think we need to have a very serious look at why we would even consider having guns like that out there.”

McChrystal served as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan until his resignation in 2010, when a Rolling Stone magazine article published critical comments he and his staff made about the Obama administration. McChrystal is also a guest lecturer for the popular course, “Gateway to Global Affairs,” a class that I took last semester — McChrystal was pretty laid-back, as far as four-star military commanders go, but he did make sure no one dared to show up late. (Once, he once made a lesson out of one unfortunately tardy girl in front of the 100-person lecture.)

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