'You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?'

nationalreview.com ^ | June 24, 2010 | Andy McCarthy

[Free ThinkerNY]

Why would General Stanley McChrystal give that kind of access to a lefty rock-n-roll magazine? Maybe because he's a kindred spirit who felt the need to assure Rolling Stone's Michael Hastings that he voted for Obama — even against McCain, a military legend who shares McChrystal's transnational progressive outlook.

"Now it can be told," elaborates Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic "The story about [McChrystal] voting for Obama is not contrived. He is a political liberal. He is a social liberal. He banned Fox News from the television sets in his headquarters. Yes, really."

Yes, really. The revealing Rolling Stone profile also tells us that the general "banned alcohol on base [and] kicked out Burger King and other symbols of American excess." (Recall the very similar Obama edict that American forces not fly the Stars and Stripes at their base during their humanitarian mission in Haiti — a self-loathing trend that has also taken hold on college campuses.) Even McChrystal's undoing here — ironically, by Rolling Stone, not Fox News — is, as VDH suggested yesterday, attributable to a disturbing contempt for authority and decorum that McChrystal and his top aides made little effort to conceal from Hastings. (Byron has more on that, here.)

I got in some hot water here last year for arguing that Gen. McChrystal, for all his undeniable valor, is a progressive big-thinker who has been conducting a sociology experiment in Islamic nation-building. It's a flawed experiment that assumes Afghan Muslims will side with us — i.e., the Westerners their clerical authorities tell them are infidel invaders and occupiers — against their fellow Afghan Muslims.

[DCPatriot]

Maybe Obama is truly a genius and manufactured this event so that Stanley can take over the DOMESTIC military.

You know...when it's time to come after the SOCONS and Tea Partiers. ;^)

[Fantasywriter]

Well I hope Petraeus didn’t walk into a situation just to get Obama’s fat out of the fire. I’m not suggesting Patraeus would do that on purpose, but what if Obama fails to give him the support he needs? Obama doesn’t like meeting with generals. He doesn’t like having to hear what they need or want to say. What if Obama cuts the legs out from under Patraeus? Does he have any options, other than resigning?

[MestaMachine]

Petraeus did not do the assessment, nor did he issue the rules for Afghanistan. He wrote the book on counterinsurgency in Iraq and McChrystal tried to do in Afghanistan what Petraeus had already done. He tried to one up Petraeus without considering the differences between Iraq and Afghanistan or their people.
This is McChrystal’s game. He tried to outshine and out Petraeus Petraeus. He blew it. Big time.

[rcrngroup]

Heh, maybe Patreaus will change the rules of engagement and dare the libs to come after him.

Yah, right. I think that most of the politically correct rules of engagement crap that is currently in place for both Iraq as well as Afghanistan were initiated by the capitulating, panderer-in-chief (Islam is a religion of peace) GW Bush, who blessed any & all rules of engagement by the politically correct weenies in the Dept of Defense. I doubt that Petraeus will remove any rules of engagement, period.

[BARLF]

Okay