Obama vs. the Military over Afghanistan

Obama continues to dither, letting stupid leftist politics trump policy.

If you had to choose between McChrystal / Petraeus plan, or a so-called "Biden Plan" (roflmao), what would you choose ?!


Charles Krauthammer On the developing rift between Gen. McChrystal and the Obama administration on Afghanistan:

We are looking at a crisis of military-civilian relations. McChrystal was in London. He was asked a question specifically about a plan that is almost identical to what the Biden proposal is, and he said, as we saw in that clip, do you think it will work?

No.

Will you support it?

No.

Now that is really near the edge of pressure on the White House. Now, McChrystal may or may not have had a hand in the leak of the original report, but what he said today is a challenge.

Now, Newsweek reports that he has said that if he is given a different strategy, he will not resign. I'm not sure I believe that. I understand why he would say it. If he were to say otherwise today, it would look like a threat and a kind of blackmail. But I cannot imagine that if his plan is rejected and if he is ordered to proceed on a plan which he has said now in public in London cannot succeed – how, in good honor, could he send his troops into battle with a plan [he says] would fail?

I think he would resign. And that would be a crisis for the Obama administration.


Can This Relationship Be Saved? [NRO Staff]
London Telegraph:

According to sources close to the administration, Gen McChrystal shocked and angered presidential advisers with the bluntness of a speech given in London last week.
The next day he was summoned to an awkward 25-minute face-to-face meeting on board Air Force One on the tarmac in Copenhagen, where the president had arrived to tout Chicago's unsuccessful Olympic bid. . . .

An adviser to the administration said: "People aren't sure whether McChrystal is being naïve or an upstart. To my mind he doesn't seem ready for this Washington hard-ball and is just speaking his mind too plainly."

In London, Gen McChrystal, who heads the 68,000 US troops in Afghanistan as well as the 100,000 Nato forces, flatly rejected proposals to switch to a strategy more reliant on drone missile strikes and special forces operations against al-Qaeda.

He told the Institute of International and Strategic Studies that the formula, which is favoured by Vice-President Joe Biden, would lead to "Chaos-istan".


Where's Petraeus? [NRO Staff]
New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Gen. David H. Petraeus, the face of the Iraq troop surge and a favorite of former President George W. Bush, spoke up or was called upon by President Obama “several times” during the big Afghanistan strategy session in the Situation Room last week, one participant says, and will be back for two more meetings this week. . . .

But the general’s closest associates say that underneath the surface of good relations, the celebrity commander faces a new reality in Mr. Obama’s White House: He is still at the table, but in a very different seat. . . .

The change has fueled speculation in Washington about whether General Petraeus might seek the presidency in 2012. His advisers say that it is absurd — but in immediate policy terms, it means there is one less visible advocate for the military in the administration’s debate over whether to send up to 40,000 additional troops to Afghanistan.

General Petraeus’s aides now privately call him “Dave the Dull,” and say he has largely muzzled himself from the fierce public debate about the war to avoid antagonizing the White House, which does not want pressure from military superstars and is wary of the general’s ambitions in particular.