Events keep dragging me back to my earlier conclusion: we need to get out of Afghanistan. Where the indigenous president is a crook, our generals bicker, and our good troops, like Sgt. R., die young, leaving behind small children. All for gains that are increasingly hard to see. Even Gen. Petraeus is stressed.
UPDATE: Sgt. R.’s remains arrive home in Smithville.
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Posted in Afghanistan, Texana, The War, Troops
Whatever Nancy Pelosi intended to stop the general from saying, it doesn’t seem to have worked. He poked Iran in the eye several times. Will we do anything more? Remains to be seen, I suppose. It all certainly sounds as complicated as Viet Nam ever was, though, obviously, with more potential immediate impact on our daily lives, and not nearly as out-of-control. Hope and change, it seems, are already in progress–without, of course, Barry and his dictator-loving advisors and their back-to-the-Saddam-era intentions.
Centcom’s boss is retiring, a year after he took the job, in what Westhawk says seem to be differences between Fallon and the Bush administration over Iran policy. Op-For essentially agrees and has a link to the Esquire article that may have precipitated the admiral’s problems. Perhaps. Could be Iraq policy, as well. An old Army friend who knows them both insists that Fallon can’t stand Gen. David Petraeus. Given the latter’s success, the former may have found, on his own, that his usefulness to Bush was at an end.
MORE: I’ve always admired Wretchard’s sense and sensibility about military matters. Mackubin Owens contends that Fallon was coming close to Union Gen. George B. McLellan’s insubordination.
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Tagged Adm William Fallon, CENTCOM, Gen. David Petraeus
The plot thickens. Seeming success in Iraq breeds efforts to undermine it. Leftist MoveOn, for instance, didn’t invent the slur "betrayus" for Gen. Petraeus that they used in their execrable ad in the NYTImes. They got it from some of his old enemies within the military, who had long used it as a nickname for him, say the usual anonymous sources. Chief among those antagonists is his boss at CENTCOM, Admiral William Fallon. As VHD might say, Gen. Sherman likewise was despised by more than a few generals in the Union army. Only his boss, Gen. Grant, held them at bay while Sherman led his devastating march through the South. P.’s boss does not back him, but President Bush does. Will it be enough?
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Posted in Iraq, The War, Troops
Tagged Admiral William Fallon, Betrayus, Gen. David Petraeus, the surge in Iraq
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