McChrystal No Loss for Conservatives

Linda Chavez "McChrystal's first mistake was to vote for Barack Obama. McChrystal told Rolling Stone that although he had voted for Obama, his first meeting with the president didn't go well. In a thinly disguised reference to "sources familiar with the meeting," Rolling Stone quotes its source -- unmistakably McChrystal -- as describing the president as "uncomfortable and intimidated" in a roomful of military brass. Well, what did he expect? He voted for a man who not only had zero military experience but no executive experience whatever -- and one, moreover, who positioned himself as the anti-war candidate during the Democratic primaries. And it is not as if Obama was running against a Republican with similarly unimpressive credentials. How could anyone whose top priority was the U.S. military pick Barack Obama over war hero John McCain?"

Obama's Impressive Choice  "There was only one choice that could have vindicated presidential authority over the military while ensuring the continuity of operations in Afghanistan -- and Obama made it. Gen. David Petraeus is the intellectual architect of modern counterinsurgency strategy. He is revered by American troops and trusted by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. Most urgently, Petraeus knows how to show deference to civilian control of the military without abandoning his own military views." Michael Gerson

The McChrystal affair has revived doubts about Barack Obama's qualities as a war president   "It is ingenious—far more so than the refusal of Mr Bush to believe the experts who told him the Iraq war was lost. But winning a war can require a single-minded will as well as a subtle brain. Mr Obama has the latter; whether he has the stubbornness to stick to an unpopular war remains to be seen."

Last Man Standing " "The United States must overcome the 'trust deficit' it faces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where many believe that we are not a reliable long-term partner... The United States must look for a way out of the war in Afghanistan. There's got to be an exit strategy."
"- President Obama's "new" Afghanistan Strategy March, 2009"
Posted by Greyhawk, in Mudville Gazette