William Pfaff
The increasingly dangerous
The former rested on the fiction that
The recent political focus has been on the replacement of Gen.
This doctrine proposes defeating an insurgency by systematically clearing with regular troops a given area under insurgent domination, then establishing there, with the help of a "surge" of American civilian nation-builders, a new representative and responsive democratic political structure, while American troops, with local soldiers and police, move on to "take" another insurgent-held area so as to clear out the insurgents there.
This is classic anti-guerilla warfare, employed by the U.S. in
The commentator
President Obama's replacement of McChrystal with Gen. Petraeus astutely protected the president from Republican attack, but could also be seen, from the electoral perspective, as a double coup.
Both generals have in the past indicated presidential ambitions, and now McChrystal is disgraced and out, and if McChrystal's supposed pessimism about the military situation is accurate, Petraeus, who formulated the
There will be no general to challenge the president unless McChrystal (who is said to have voted for Obama in 2008), were to offer himself to the Republicans in 2012. A general on his way to success, stabbed in the back by leftist journalists, jettisoned by a liberal administration composed of those un-American aliens-who-govern-us, ready to surrender to terrorism, strikes me as a more promising Republican presidential candidate than
The ambition among the most important of those who actually live in
Higher military and political ranks in
The only solution is for Obama to keep his promise to leave
Available at Amazon.com:
At War with the Weather: Managing Large-Scale Risks in a New Era of Catastrophes
- The Real Reason Why Afghanistan Is a Lost Cause
- The War Drones On
- When the 'Right War' Goes Wrong
- The Afghanistan Paradox
- Pakistan's Gambit in Afghanistan
- Obama Wasting Opportunities in Latin America
- 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 William Pfaff