The AP is reporting The One has relieved General McChrystal, but we are waiting for the President's announcement, as we speak. Gen. Petraeus will replace McChrystal, supposedly. God help us.
Update, 1155 hrs: I think the President made the wrong decision by relieving Gen McChrsytal, but he was appropriately presidential in so doing... at least based upon the content and tone of his address, just now concluded. This whole flap was much more about perception than reality, but the two are often confused.
I certainly wish Gen. Petraeus well, and I hope he holds up under the additional responsibility. The span of control maxim is at the very edge of the envelope here.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Re: reality and perception being confused. That seems to be among the greatest challenges faced by our Young President -- he believes how he was perceived during the campaign is reality. He's just confused.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little unsettled about the whole changeover -- the Afghanistan/Pakistan theater is so very complex. I hope it doesn't take Petraeus long to get up to speed. I do wonder, though, why they keep loading him up when there is plenty of capable brass just itching to get a shot at that job.
Well, maybe not so many are itching now.
I still smell something yet to be (if ever) disclosed about the McChrystal thing, though.
If I was a post-modern left-wing President, the message I would try like the dickens to get out to The American People would be that the bitter divide between the hard left and the military is now fully healed. I would try to govern like Henry Tudor marrying Elizabeth of York to unite the white & red roses after decades of bloody civil war.
ReplyDeleteYou really cannot blame Obama for this latest tempest-in-a-teapot. But still, the lack of energy being directed toward the effort I just described -- it is truly mind-boggling. Here we are picking up another piece of evidence that left-wingers and service branches can't quite get along. And it's...ah, well. Obama did the right thing, I think. But it's just chopping away at the leafy part of the weed, if I can be forgiven for injecting yet another metaphor.
It isn't that there's no healing going on. My complaint is that there's a lack of effort put into projecting an image of healing. Like it just doesn't matter to 'em. Maybe it doesn't.
I still smell something yet to be (if ever) disclosed about the McChrystal thing, though.
ReplyDeleteI'm not big into tinfoil hat stuff, but I agree with ya on this. As blogger-friend Lex indicated, there are "wheels within wheels" on this one. The real story may not emerge until long after you and I are dead, Moogie.
My complaint is that there's a lack of effort put into projecting an image of healing. Like it just doesn't matter to 'em. Maybe it doesn't.
I don't think it matters to the hard-core leftists within the administration and its friends and advisers outside the fold. Leftists have ALWAYS looked upon the military with mildly concealed disdain, at best, and outright loathing... most of the time. I wouldn't look for any sort of healing... real or imagined... anytime soon.
"I still smell something yet to be (if ever) disclosed about the McChrystal thing, though."
ReplyDeleteIt does smell like my 14 year old son's armpits. If I was Obama, I'd have fired McChrystal on the spot. I would not have even let this become some kind of story.
And (I'd like to think) if I was McChrystal, I would never have granted an interview to the friggin' Rolling Stone to start out with.
Honestly, I don't know all the ins and outs of what the good General is required to do. He may be required to give broad access to weird, worthless magazines that can possibly sink his career. I don't know.
I do know, though, that this was not a "mistake." This was not some slip of the lip. The General KNEW what he was doing. And I'm quite sure that he knew WHY.
Regardless, I know I wouldn't want his job. And, obviously, neither did he.
McChrystal's behavior in this situation was appalling, and I too would have fired him on the spot. There's a method for grousing about your CinC, and that's via the normal chain of command. And certainly McChrystal could have requested a meeting with Obama to air his grievances. But to show your "dirty laundry" to a periodical ... and Rolling Stone of all possible choices ... WTF? Considering Rolling Stone's left leaning readership, I can imagine only that McChrystal was trying for some reason to damage Obama's credibility with that particular audience. Not easy to do, since most of them probably drank the Kool-Aid.
ReplyDeleteIt's unfortunate that this happened at such a critical juncture, but I believe Obama made the right decision.