McChrystal is the latest in the long list of casualties to be run roughshod by the Obama bus. This has been an interesting week. First we had rumors of Rahm Emmanuel, and then those rumors were denied. Then we have a stronger sense the Peter Orszag was on his way out the door, and that one turns out to be pretty much the case. And now it's official that Gen. Stan McChrystal is one more rat off the boat.
There are plenty of backstories to the backstabbing but this is one of those cases in which it has just gotten a little too much for me to shutup about. Which is to say that I'm pretty uninterested in the nuances. Orszag was a straight man in an otherwise overspun and over-rhetorical cast of White House characters. Ten minutes of reading will show anyone so interested that McChrystal was the last American trusted by the Karzai government.
There's a mineral fight going on here. First it is discovered that Afghanistan has about a trillion dollars worth of minerals. Then Obama has to demonstrate that he has the minerals to fire a big bad general. Well, the whole thing has gone to crap as far as I'm concerned. When you have a brooding intellectual who can't stomach the idea the people think poorly of him and he starts firing people for back talk, then things start running downhill. So what's my prognosis? Next year this time the Obama administration will be chockablock with nitwit sycophants and there will be a hundred lawsuits.
Speaking of lawsuits, imagine the cheek of the Administration to appeal the decision to overturn his six month drilling ban. The nerve of those oil companies to try to make money when Obama says stop! All news and information is Obama positive, or else.
But back to the military, the rule is go ahead and tell everybody how you like your sex, but don't criticize the civilian authority. You're not a citizen, you're a soldier. Different rules you know. Unless you're a Muslim terrorist of course, and then you have complete freedom of speech.
It's very dangerous to rhetorically cross a man who masters nothing else but rhetoric. Sooner or later everybody is going to see this. Cobb's Rule #3 is in effect of course - Talk what you know and don't mumble. I expect that the General was brave enough to handle the consequences of this to his own career - I mean given that he understood that Obama's willingess to ruthlessly destroy political enemies no matter what their value is to the nation. And of course Stan should have known better vis a vis the strict rules of protocol what you tell the press. I mean, Americans really have no right to know if their generals fighting wars have any reservations about the policy that sent them there, right? And clearly McChrystal was only trying to sabotage his own mission, right? But then here I go playing rhetorical games.
The bottom line here is that McChrystal's loose lips sunk his own ship, and because of that we will be set back in the war. McChrystal's no McArthur and in the end Afghanistan is a small war. So which is going to take more energy to fix, the war on the ground or Obama's image of being totally in control as Commander in Chief? Which is more important?
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