Posted on 06/26/2010 10:33:04 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Barack Obama's firing of Stanley McChrystal showed weakness and will backfire
He may have been hailed for his decisiveness, but Barack Obama sacked the wrong man and has yet to sort out his Afghanistan policy, writes Toby Harnden in Washington
Published: 4:37PM BST 26 Jun 2010
For the Washington cognoscenti, the appointment of General David Petraeus marked the crescendo of President Barack Obama's Wonderful Week. In firing General Stanley McChrystal, Obama, the ultimate cool cat, was transformed into Mr Angry. The law professor finally became commander-in-chief.
Obama, so the Beltway groupthink goes, turned a lose-lose situation into a political victory by asserting his authority over an insubordinate steely-eyed killer and replacing him with the ultimate warrior-scholar. He showed the doubters he was tough, and he traded up.
How wrong the conventional wisdom can be. Obama's actions in dragging McChrystal back to Washington and personally sacking him in as dramatic a fashion as possible in fact displayed weakness. They also avoided the real problem - his confused Afghanistan policy and dysfunctional civilian team.
(Excerpt) Read more at telegraph.co.uk ...
Toby Harnden has a history of reporting actual truth about BO even before the election.
Yes, good to have Toby Harnden back again, telling the truth about the Obomanoid.
My only reservation is that he goes out of his way to elevate Hillary Clinton, whom he calls one of Obama’s most effective cabinet secretaries at one point and suggests should have won the presidency.
Please. Hillary is very nearly as much of an empty suit as Obama. The only thing she ever did in her life to get her to the top of the heap was to get married to bill clinton.
Obama is a thin-skinned purple-lipped pussy who needs to be impeached, tried for treason and shipped to Gitmo to rot with his muslim buddies.
Given his predilection for relying on the Easy button, it’s no surprise that Obama hoped the McChrystal firing would serve as a Reset button. Instead, it has merely highlighted the very weaknesses in his “leadership” that have led to plummeting approval ratings. Rather than serving as a brake on his descent, the firing at best made no difference and at worst has accelerated its pace.
Obama’s advisors—not to mention leaders in Congress—have got to be thinking to themselves “how many more shoes can possibly drop before Election Day?” With the hurricane season ramping up in the Gulf, the Blago trial in full swing, things heating up in the Middle East and the Koreas, and what’s shaping up to be a double-dip recession, it would be astonishing if there weren’t one or more additional catastrophes that will put Obama’s bumbling on full display.
His ratings have declined to the point where people expect him to bungle matters: the only issue is how he will do it. Under these circumstances, it would require something extraordinary (think of Bush’s remarks with the firefighters at the 9/11 site) to turn around public opinion.
Well yeah, but this is in the opinion of the beltway media. If obama let fly a fart in their direction they would fight for the privilege of sniffing it and declare it to be Chanel No.5.
Zero doesn't have it in him. How can something like that ever materialize on a teleprompter???
I see the author failed to mention that a couple days ago an Islamic paper was claiming the firing a victory in the war. It also proved how weak our government is. Just more of Hussein aiding and abetting the enemy.
“How can something like that ever materialize on a teleprompter???”
I concur that it can’t. But during Bush’s first 8 months, he was getting slammed in the press (notwithstanding he’d gotten a solid tax cut enacted and No Child Left Behind approved by both houses in Congress) and those brief remarks at the 9/11 site were so genuine and heartfelt that everyone realized we had a leader on our hands who was not going to whimper away with his tail between his legs but instead stand up to the perpetrators and ensure they paid a heavy price for their perfidy.
I completely agree! O’bambianna is missing the “leader-ship” gene. It’s not in his DNA. He throws commissions together to cover himself front and back. They get to come up with solutions (ostensibly) and he gets to blame them when things don’t work out.
He reminds of the boss in the in the Dilbert cartoon series.
Yes, please.
A darn fine writer and analyst, IMO.
It's a DISASTER for Obama.
First, the wide-spread contempt the military has for him is exposed for all to see. Secondly, he goes to Bush's guy “General Betrayus” and has to demote him to Afgan commander in order to bail out his sorry ass.
Never has the spectacular incompetence of the lefties toward the war effort been demonstrate so clearly.
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