Generally Speaking - About Afghanistan

There's obviously no need to rehash what was written about General Stanley McChrystal and his aids in the now infamous Rolling Stone article that shook DC more than the very real earthquake that rattled Ontario and Quebec today.

McChrystal is out. A political no-brainer for Obama.

The other shoe that dropped, however, is that Petraeus is in.

And what did candidate Obama have to say about the man he just nominated to head the ISAF surge?

Obama Gives Petraeus Remarks Low Marks

By ELI LAKE, Staff Reporter of the Sun | September 11, 2007

WASHINGTON — Senator Obama, the Democrat from Illinois seeking his party’s nomination for the presidency, is giving the Iraq progress report of General David Petraeus low marks, going so far as to claim the one clear success in Iraq in recent months — the rout of Al Qaeda in Anbar — has nothing to do with the military surge the general in Washington is defending.

“I’m not sure that the success in Anbar has anything to do with the surge,” Mr. Obama said today at the first of two hearings featuring General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. “You yourself said it was political.”

And yet president Obama bowed to McChrystal when he publicly shamed him to send tens of thousands more troops to Afghanistan for yet another military surge that's bound to end in failure - something even McChrystal now acknowledges.

Obama today:

He urged the Senate to confirm Petraeus swiftly and emphasized the Afghanistan strategy he announced in December was not shifting with McChrystal's departure.

"This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy," Obama said.

That policy is killing record numbers of soldiers.

That policy may well slow down the withdrawal of US troops while painting a rosy picture that counts on collective amnesia about just how "successful" Petraeus' surge strategy was in Iraq.

Same war. Different commander. Same policy. Different outcome?

Not likely.

It wasn't McChrystal's policy implementation that Obama had a problem with. It was his insubordination.

Candidate Obama would have told president Obama not to have nominated McChrystal in the first place considering his track record. But candidate Obama and president Obama are two very different people - as we all know by now.