Clarence Page
Looking back, it is ironic that Pentagon brass thought Gen.
That was before an embedded
That left a lot of people wondering why the general gave so much access to a reporter for a rock 'n' roll magazine in the first place. In fact, military leaders have known at least since the
And war reporting is nothing new for the pop culture magazine, as anyone knows who is familiar with "Generation Kill," the book or the HBO series that came from
This time it just happened to be reporter
McChrystal's mistake was to forget the phrase, "That's off the record," judging by accounts given by Hastings since his scoop hit the fan. As a result, the Obama White House was plunged into a weird but serious crisis.
McChrystal had said nothing in the report that disagreed with the president's Afghan policy, but a disagreement to the point of disarray within the ranks of Team Obama had been exposed to an intolerable degree. "I welcome debate among my team," said President Obama, "but I won't tolerate division."
Yet the lines of division follow those of a big debate that becomes even more divisive as casualties mount and the war fails to produce much measurable progress.
The "debate" centers on the difference between two strategies: "counterterrorism" and "counterinsurgency." Counterterrorism was the mission that took us to
On the other side of the debate, the counterterrorism approach is preferred by Vice President
That view is increasingly popular among Americans, particularly in Obama's liberal base, according to polls. The president leaned in Biden's direction last year when he set
But a day after replacing McChrystal with his former boss, Gen.
If Petraeus can pull off a turnaround like the "Sunni awakening" he encouraged in
Available at Amazon.com:
At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
- Stopping Nuclear Proliferation Before It Starts
- Veiled Truths: The Rise of Political Islam in the West
- Steps to Stop Iran From Getting a Nuclear Bomb
- Iran: The Nuclear Containment Conundrum
- Iran: The Right Kind Of Containment
- China Is the Key to Handling Nuclear North Korea
- Coping With China's Financial Power
- What China's Currency Reform Means For Investors
- Russian-American Obstacles Overshadow Obama-Medvedev Meeting
- Russia's Courtship of Silicon Valley
- Ukrainian Blues: Viktor Yanukovych's Rise and Democracy's Fall
- Russia: Prisoners of the Caucasus
- The Afghan Challenge Is Far Tougher
- New Guard, Old Policy on Afghanistan
- Fear and Uncertainty in Afghanistan
- Afghanistan: Bribing the Enemy
- Afghanistan Poses Difficult Challenges
- Defining Success in Afghanistan
- Sad Stan, Famous Petraeus
- The Challenge of Reconciliation in Kenya
- The Tyranny of Unity in Zimbabwe
- Mexico: The New Cocaine Cowboys
- Under Santos Colombia Could Rise to the Next Level
- Autocrats' Latest Weapon: Indirect Censorship
- Latin America's Rich Should Be More Generous
- Castrocare in Crisis
(C) 2010 Clarence Page