I guess they just couldn’t figure out the seating chart for this morning’s meeting of the national security team in the Situation Room.
Have McChrystal sit between Gen “Clown” Jones and Richard “Wounded Animal” Holbrooke?
Instead, after meeting President Obama for 30 minutes, McChrystal returned to his home in Ft. McNair, Washington, D.C. He is being replaced by Gen David Petraeus.
The Wall Street Journal reports:
The decision to put Gen. Petraeus in command sends a signal that the president stands behind the counterinsurgency tactics pushed hard by Gen. McChrystal and championed by Gen. Petraeus.
Mr. Obama said his acceptance of Gen. McChrystal’s recommendation didn’t reflect a disagreement about strategy or personal insult. “We are in full agreement about our strategy,” he said Wednesday, expressing “great admiration” for the general.
“But war is bigger than any one man,” Mr. Obama said. He said the change was necessary to maintain a “unity of effort” in Afghanistan. “I welcome debate among my team, but I won’t tolerate division.”
As for sentiment among US troops on the ground, that might have been best summed up by a US Marine at Combat Outpost Hanson in Marjah:
A lance corporal from Denver explains that political news tends to trickle down slowly among Marines with limited access to the Internet, newspapers and other creature comforts readily available at rear bases. “Half of these guys don’t even know why we’re here in the first place,” he said with a laugh.
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The last sentence from the Marine Lance Corporal from Denver, says it all. Considering the number of Marines there, one can extrapolate to the population of the U.S., then there are a lot more that don’t know why/what were there for. If the U.S. still had the draft in use, & there wasn’t any exemptions like the I.D.F., you could bet that there wouldn’t have been any of the B.S. taking place in either Iraq or Afghanistan. One day, if the World hasn’t been blown up by the Mad Men in power, the U.S. might wake up & smell the coffee, reinstate compulsory Military service, giving everybody a stake in what wars we fight. It might also wake up the People to what the Government for the Special interests are doing.
The dead fathers and uncles of my family have been there, and done that, during their own suffering from empire.
For it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ “Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country,” when the guns begin to shoot;
An’ it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ anything you please;
But Tommy ain’t a bloomin’ fool – you bet that Tommy sees!
Yep, Rudyard old chap; wait till ‘Tommy’ comes home.