Here is more from the Washington Post:
[US Generals] including Stanley McChrystal, who sought and supervised the 2009 American troop surge — have thrived in the private sector since leaving the war. They have amassed influence within businesses, at universities and in think tanks, in some cases selling their experience in a conflict that killed an estimated 176,000 people, cost the United States more than $2 trillion and concluded with the restoration of Taliban rule.
Last year, retired Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., who commanded American forces in Afghanistan in 2013 and 2014, joined the board of Lockheed Martin, the Pentagon's biggest defense contractor. Retired Gen. John R. Allen, who preceded him in Afghanistan, is president of the Brookings Institution, which has received as much as $1.5 million over the last three years from Northrop Grumman, another defense giant.
Writer Adam Johnson notes that every couple of years the Washington Post and New York Times write an investigative piece "explicitly saying or heavily implying that foreign policy think tanks are laundromats for weapons contractors then 5 minutes later they institutionally memory hole it and go back to treating them as neutral sources."