Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) said Gen. Stanley McChrystal used “poor judgment” in criticizing President Barack Obama in a new magazine article but declined to say whether the general should keep his job.

Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Tuesday that it’s up to Obama — who has summoned the top U.S. general in Afghanistan to the White House on Wednesday to explain his comments in Rolling Stone magazine — to weigh the general’s future.

“I have confidence in his abilities as a general,” Kerry said in an interview on MSNBC when asked about McChrystal’s fate. “I think that this is something that has to be decided by the president and his top security team, and they deserve to have a conversation before a lot of us are chiming in from the sidelines.”

But Kerry, a decorated Vietnam veteran, also attacked McChrystal’s remarks. “It is certainly a mistake. There is no question that it is poor judgment on the part of both the general and some of his staff,” Kerry said.

“The real question is, Will it affect his ability to continue to have a relationship with the president and his top staff? That is between them,” Kerry added. “I think people need to give this meeting tomorrow the room to take place and not have the normal Washington, you know, 50,000 different opinions sounding off in between now and then.”