{"id":188980,"date":"2010-06-23T20:01:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-24T01:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/06\/23\/normally-i-dont-buy-the-obama-and-the-eleventy-dimensional-chess-but\/"},"modified":"2010-06-23T20:01:00","modified_gmt":"2010-06-24T01:01:00","slug":"normally-i-dont-buy-the-obama-and-the-eleventy-dimensional-chess-but","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/06\/23\/normally-i-dont-buy-the-obama-and-the-eleventy-dimensional-chess-but\/","title":{"rendered":"Normally, I Don&#8217;t Buy the Obama and the Eleventy Dimensional Chess, But\u2026\u2026\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It is clear to me that <a href=\"http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/news\/politics\/la-fg-mcchrystal-obama-20100624,0,558830.story\">Obama&#8217;s decision to fire Stanley McCrystal<\/a> is the right thing on <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">many<\/span> levels, both on a political and a policy leve, and not just because this action is essential to the  maintenance of good order and discipline in the military.<\/p>\n<p>It is clear that anything else would have undercut both Obama&#8217;s credibility and the idea of civilian control of the military.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, it was a <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">lot<\/span> more, it:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Got rid of a corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy (Tillman, torture at the Camp Nama prison camp, his earlier insubordination, etc.)<\/li>\n<li>He put someone in charge whom the Republicans are TREMENDOUSLY invested in (Petraeus), and so inoculated himself somewhat from any potential downsides.<\/li>\n<li>He has given some ownership of the Afghanistan war to another corrupt and political officer with a long history of being a Bush admin butt boy, and if Davey (Petraeus) is kept busy, he won&#8217;t be leaking stories to undermine the timeline.<\/li>\n<li>It is clear that this is a temporary appointment, so Obama can replace Petraeus at any time because it&#8217;s clear that being head of CENTCOM and Afghanistan is too much<\/li>\n<ul>\n<li>At that time, he can appoint someone who won&#8217;t lobby to undermine the time-line.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<li>Petraeus will be too busy to engage in political machinations over the next few months.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>All in all, I give this an 8 out of 10.  It works on just about every level, except, of course, for the fact that we remain in the &#8220;Graveyard of Empires.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It is clear to me that Obama&#8217;s decision to fire Stanley McCrystal is the right thing on many levels, both on a political and a policy leve, and not just because this action is essential to the maintenance of good order and discipline in the military. It is clear that anything else would have undercut &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1153,1006,1173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-afghanistan","category-military","category-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188980"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}