In the end, it was a "pissin' match." The general and his advisors did not believe the President would stand strong. They put the President to the test. They thought he would back down, or offer a subordinate to discipline him. The President stood strong. The general went to a liberal rag to diss him and his VP and his administration. Perphaps he was hoping the President would cower and do nothing. McChrystal was wrong. The President stood strong. He gave McChrystal his walking papers. He put in place a general who would follow him and support the American people.
Now McChrytal leaves in disgrace. His cheerleaders were also FIRED. McChrystal's career is wasted. The only question unanswered is WHY?
. Was he so naive to think the President would NOT stand strong?
. Was he so naive to think anyone would side with him in this argument?
. McChrystal fired his PR advisors, and rightfully so. They were wrong. They were idiots.
This is a lesson to be learned by future generals, pundits, and ALL people in politics. Learn this lesson well. Never underestimate the MAN (woman) in power!
AntiWar.com : General Petraeus is less dogmatic, doctrinaire and jingoist than General Stanley A. McChrystal : "Switch to Petraeus Betrays Afghan Policy Crisis"
ReplyDeleteThis horrible conflict of constantly murdering human beings has to stop one day. Many of the victims are Children, Women and the Old. People are starving in Afghanistan and the almost only business is the Opium Crops, Marihuana Cultivation, etc ... Drugs Traffic, etc .... Afghanistan is sunk in poverty and desperation.
The Jingo Lies of the Media and its Editorialist "Pundits" do not produce food for the masses in Afghanistan.
This General Petraeus seem to have more diplomatic qualities than his predecessor.
One day Americans and NATO will have to leave, the sooner the better.
AntiWar.com
Switch to Petraeus Betrays Afghan Policy Crisis
June 24, 2010
by Gareth Porter
Gareth Porter (born 18 June 1942, Independence, Kansas) is an American historian, investigative journalist and policy analyst on U.S. foreign and military policy. A strong opponent of U.S. wars in Southeast Asia, and the Middle East, he has also written on the potential for diplomatic compromise to end or avoid wars in Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Iraq and Iran. He is the author of a history of the origins of the Vietnam War, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam.
...............
During the Vietnam War, Gareth Porter served as Saigon Bureau Chief for Dispatch News Service International and later co-director of the Indochina Resource Center, an anti-war research and education organization based in Washington, D.C
Switch to Petraeus Betrays Afghan Policy Crisis
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/06/23/switch-to-petraeus-betrays-afghan-policy-crisis/
The Future of Foreign Policies :
Prophesizing.com
Vicente Duque
AntiWar.com
ReplyDeleteSwitch to Petraeus Betrays Afghan Policy Crisis
http://original.antiwar.com/porter/2010/06/23/switch-to-petraeus-betrays-afghan-policy-crisis/
Some excerpts :
Despite President Barack Obama’s denial that his decision to fire Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal as commander in Afghanistan and replace him with Gen. David Petraeus signified any differences with McChrystal over war strategy, the decision obviously reflects a desire by Obama to find a way out of a deepening policy crisis in Afghanistan.
Although the ostensible reason was indiscreet comments by McChrystal and his aides reported in Rolling Stone, the switch from McChrystal to Petraeus was clearly the result of White House unhappiness with McChrystal’s handling of the war.
It had become evident in recent weeks that McChrystal’s strategy is not working as he had promised, and Congress and the U.S. political elite had already become very uneasy about whether the war was on the wrong track.
In calling on Petraeus, the Obama administration appears to be taking a page from the George W. Bush administration’s late 2006 decision to rescue a war in Iraq which was generally perceived in Washington as having become an embarrassing failure. But both Obama and Petraeus are acutely aware of the differences between the situation in Iraq at that moment and the situation in Afghanistan today.
In taking command in Iraq in 2007, Petraeus was being called upon to implement a dramatically new counterinsurgency strategy based on a major "surge" in U.S. troops.
Obama will certainly be put under pressure by the Republican Party, led by Sen. John McCain, to agree to eliminate the mid-2011 deadline for the beginning of a U.S. withdrawal and perhaps even for yet another troop surge in Afghanistan.
But accounts of Obama administration policymaking on the war last year make it clear that Obama caved into military pressure in 2009 for the troop surge of 2010 only as part of a compromise under which McChrystal and Petraeus agreed to a surge of 18 months duration. It was clearly understood by both civilian and military officials, moreover, that after the surge was completed, the administration would enter into negotiations on a settlement of the war.
Petraeus’s political skills and ability to sell a strategy involving a negotiated settlement offers Obama more flexibility than he has had with McChrystal in command.
Contrary to the generally accepted view that Petraeus mounted a successful counterinsurgency campaign in Iraq, his main accomplishment was to make the first formal accommodation with Sunni insurgents.
Petraeus demonstrated in his command in Iraq a willingness to adjust strategic objectives in light of realities he could not control. He had it made it clear to his staff at the outset that they would make one last effort to show progress, but that he would tell Congress that it was time to withdraw if he found that it was not working.
As commander in Iraq, Petraeus chose staff officers who were skeptics and realists rather than true believers, according to accounts from members of his staff in Iraq. When one aide proposed in a memorandum in the first weeks of his command coming to terms with the Shi’ite insurgents led by Moqtada al Sadr, for example, Petraeus did not dismiss the idea.
The Future of Foreign Policies :
Prophesizing.com
Vicente Duque
El Duque seems to agree that the war is unwinnable and that we will ultimately be forced to withdraw ignominiously as we did in Viet Nam. Obama just didn't have the experience to see that Afganistan would become his war and his Viet Nam.
ReplyDelete