It is my understanding the military chain of command from the general in charge in Iraq through the JCS did not agree with Petraeus.

Bush overuled all to go with Petraeus.

In “The March Up”, by Bing West, he writes of Day 10 of the Iraq War(March 30, 2003), when the regional command authority called a pause for the logistics chain to catch up:

” In the course of a few days, CFLCC’s operational decision to pause had become a major policy matter in Washington. Many Muslims, Arabs, and even many Europeans had opposed the violent removal of Saddam’s regime from the outset and were strident in their objections. Any signs of weakness or hesitation on the part of the American military would be met with glee and would undercut international respect for the United States with long term military, economic, and foreign policy consequences”

Same page (106)

Instead, the Washington Post cited “top Army officers’ as saying the war might well last into summer.

1 – 10 days later our troops had won victory and taken Baghdad.

2 – the same idiots are saying the same things again.

“Also, Sean, Obama has spoken to his general in afghanistan twice. TWICE. Do you know how many times Bush talked with his generals ?”

Which generals? The problem with the criticism not speaking the McChrystal is that it is not a big deal. Bush didn’t speak very often with generals at McChrystal’s level during his term. The chain of command would have Obama speaking often with people above McChrystal’s level, including Petraeus, the JCS and Gates.

This is how Bush handled it. He did covertly used his NSC staff to get feelers from lower ranking generals who were in the sphere of operations.

I would be more interested in how many conversations Obama has had with Petraeus and how often Petraes speaks with Gates.

The problem with listening to generals is that there are lots of generals. The ones on the JSC during Bush’s 2nd term would have led us to defeat in Iraq and made sure Petraeus was in charge of supplies at Ft. Drum.

among the Taleban and alQ potential recruits, they won that fight, they now hold the ground, they now get to torture and kill anyone who cooperated with us that stuck around. The folks that did cooperate, and had the sense to bug out, are now homeless.

It doesn’t matter how we try to spin it, it was a victory for the bad guys.

Either answer is okay – just tell me what ya want.

Regards,

http://powerandcontrol.blogspot.com/2009/10/epiphany-on-left.html

Once he gets them out, he’s fair game.

If he wants to revert to Bush/Rumsfeld strategy without admitting it, so be it.

Also, Sean, Obama has spoken to his general in afghanistan twice. TWICE. Do you know how many times Bush talked with his generals ?

Also, those two extra brigades were sent to the south – Kandahar and Helmand. Nuristan is in the northeast. That’s roughly the equivalent of having more troops in El Paso, and having a nasty fight in Austin.

Also, let’s not get in the habit of second-guessing battlefield-based strategic or tactical redeployments, or out-and-out individual retreats or losses. Sometimes they are necessary and unavoidable, as we can’t always be moving forward. We don’t want to try to score points against political foes on the backs of our military’s temporary setbacks.

The last thing we want is to have politics factor into military decisions even more. It was wrong when the left exerted that pressure on Bush, and it’d be wrong for us to do it now. Two wrongs don’t make a right.

That’s better. Much better.