This is just a week of regime change, even if those going out and those coming in look very similar in overall perspective. General Stanley McChrystal has been replaced by counter-insurgency uber-guru General David Petraeus. Bottom line: No policy change in Afghanistan.
General Stanley McChrystal has more staff, more strategists, more financing, and more clout in the field than Richard Holbrooke, Karl Eikenberry, General Jim Jones, Vice President Biden and the NATO allies that he and his allies disparaged.
Barack Obama has an easy choice to make: fire a general who has established a culture of insubordination and indifference toward civilian leaders and partners in government or defer yet again to a general who acquires power like medals every time he outwits or outmaneuvers the White House.
This is a guest note by former U.S. Senator Ernest F. “Fritz” Hollings (D-SC). MONEY Reading Michael Hager in The Washington Post last Friday (18 June), “Congress needs a mediation tool to dissolve gridlock,” notes that we are going to extremes to solve simple problems.
This was my wake up view this morning. Oakley continues to make good progress.
Oakley has pulled through the worst of this stomach-turning nightmare, his as well as ours. Those of us who are attached to this pup thank everyone for their effusive, really wonderful and thoughtful notes that have come to us in large waves.
I’m flying across country today, on my way to Reno, Nevada — where from a dingy hotel according to Jonathan Alter’s fascinating new book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, then candidate Barack Obama triggered the start of a serious White House transition plan.
I just received the press announcement from Bruce Stokes and Andrew Kohut at the Pew Research Center on the just released Pew Global Attitudes Survey. Fascinating stuff — and disturbing. 49% of Nigerians have a “favorable” view of al Qaeda, and a majority of Pakistanis “favor” an Iran nuclear weapons program.
One of my couple of north stars in my life is, in part, a pup named “Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner.” Two days from tonight on June 18th, Oakley will be eight years old. Tonight, he is recovering from surgery — and hopefully can pull through.
