After sacking an important general for overstepping the mark Truman and Lincoln didn't haggle with their successor about the relationship between a democracy and its' armed forces.

Why should Obama?

It would set a dangerous precedent if he had to 'cut a deal' with the military to ensure its' loyalty. There is no need for dialogue or understanding. In a democracy the military is there to do what it's told.

If Obama makes the decison to cut and run then it is up to the military to deliver a strategy that does that in the most efficient and effective way, not to b***h to the press about it.

Ultimately it's far more important that the President is seen to get his way than the US wins or loses in Afghanistan. If you think differently then maybe your priorities are wrong.

I don't think it's quite fair to say that President Obama regards the Afghanistan war as an irritant inherited from his predecessor. It's just a very bad situation, thanks in large part to his predecessor.

I have some criticisms to make of how Obama has handled Afghanistan, as well as other subjects. One of them, actually, is that he has not dwelt enough in public about the damage done by the last administration's sponsorship of years worth of drift there. Discussions of counterinsurgency, on blogs like this one and elsewhere, tend to dwell on how it can take a long time, ten years or more --- from now. Always from now. Whose fault is it that we didn't start applying COIN principles to Afghanistan in 2002?

Now, the fact that Afghanistan is a very bad situation makes it more rather than less important for Obama to make sure that the people he has working on it are not wasting time feuding with one another. The way he has chosen to organize his administration makes it difficult for him to do this. The advice he is getting, including advice from Bush Republicans who helped create the mess in Afghanistan, is to grit his teeth, show his muscles, and bluff: we can stay in Afghanistan forever if we need to, we'll stand down when the Afghans stand up, we're going to show resolve -- a prescription very far from applying to a correct diagnosis at this point.

Incidentally, one thing that might help Obama in the very difficult situation he confronts now would be acknowledgement by officials in the last administration of their role in creating it. Certainly Obama "owns" the Afghanistan war now, but in baseball it's the pitcher who leaves the game with his team down by five runs who is charged with the loss.

Besides the common reaction of how the f*!k could these guys have been so undisciplined in front of the press, I haven't heard anyone follow up on McChrystal's question - why the hell didn't the President know who this guy was when he met him? Why wasn't the President prepared when they met to discuss the war? Whether or not he likes it, whether or not he inherited it or not, the President has committed this nation to WAR. He should be sufficiently responsible to at least know the basics about the situation, like who the commanding general of the war effort is.

While the fate of McChrystal has been decided, the American people should continue asking the hard questions of this administration.

Three Bush’s blunders are haunting US Afghan mission. And Obama has to focus on undoing those Bush blunders by stopping Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

First, during the siege of Kunduz in November 2001, the Bush administration allowed Pakistan to spirit away by airlift hundreds, if not thousands, of Taliban operatives cornered by the advancing Northern Alliance in Kunduz. Pakistan relocated those Taliban cadres including Mullah Mohammed Omar in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan from where Mullah Omar’s QST has been planning raids in Afghanistan ever since. Obama has to threaten Pakistan with stoppage of all US aid unless Pakistani Army immediately cracks down on Haqqani’s HQN and Mullah Omar’s QST terror networks.

‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘ as General McChrystal narrated in his August, 2009 report to President Obama. But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002!

Second, Bush administration did NOT provide sufficient troops to secure Afghanistan against Taliban because so many US troops were tied down in Iraq to destroy Saddam‘s imaginary weapons of mass destruction. Pakistan is banking on Obama’s deadline of troop withdrawal by July, 2011. Obama needs to declare unequivocally that that deadline is erased.

Third, Bush put blind faith in Musharraf’s Pakistan to fight the very terrorist threat that Pakistan itself created. Musharraf continued to shelter, protect and support Mullah Mohammed Omar’s Quetta Shura Taliban in Quetta, provincial capital of Baluchistan and Haqqani network in North Waziristan. Bush naively tolerated such a duplicitous Musharraf game. Obama needs to override Pakistan’s objections and go after not just Haqqani’s HQN network in North Waziristan but also after Mullah Omar’s QST network in Baluchistan with the ferocious drone attacks.

"While we are on the subject of life after McChrystal, the Ink Spots very generously comes to its senses regarding this blog and its author. I knew they just needed time."

"Reporters doing one-off profiles for magazines such as Rolling Stone and Esquire have less invested in a continuing relationship than do beat reporters covering the war for newspapers and newsmagazines. That doesn’t mean you should avoid one-off reporters, but it does mean that they have no incentive to establish and maintain a relationship of trust over weeks and months of articles."

So you admit that you work for the military and you view them as your clients.
That's why we need Nir Rosen and Jon Stewart: one to do his job and report rather than journalize and judge and the other to help us survive the stupidity of it all.

These wars ARE an irritant bequeathed to Obama by his idiot predecessor. And Obama should end 'em quick and stop getting people killed for no purpose.

Bush took a fundamental wrong turn after 9/11, opting to try to unilaterally impose American dominance on all the world, instead of patiently building international stability through law and justice. We will pay for this moronic response -- not solely one man's, of course, but shared by US elites generally -- for decades to come. It may even undo our bedraggled democracy.

I'm struck that the distance shown between McChrystal's Team America and the civilian leadership is yet another illustration of the gulf between the military and the nation it protects, yet another argument that American wars need American citizens fighting them, not a standing army divorced from the society, isolated by its welfare system, and led by flag officers convinced of military superiority. Bring back the draft. Kill the AVF - it's a loser.

Test. Sorry, something ain't working for me.