Monday, October 05, 2009

Krauthammer's Take   [NRO Staff]

From Friday's Fox News All-Stars.

 

On the developing rift between Gen. McChrystal and the Obama administration on Afghanistan:

 We are looking at a crisis of military-civilian relations. McChrystal was in London. He was asked a question specifically about a plan that is almost identical to what the Biden proposal is, and he said, as we saw in that clip, do you think it will work?

 

No.

 

Will you support it?

 

No.

 

Now that is really near the edge of pressure on the White House. Now, McChrystal may or may not have had a hand in the leak of the original report, but what he said today is a challenge.

 

Now, Newsweek reports that he has said that if he is given a different strategy, he will not resign. I'm not sure I believe that. I understand why he would say it. If he were to say otherwise today, it would look like a threat and a kind of blackmail. But I cannot imagine that if his plan is rejected and if he is ordered to proceed on a plan which he has said now in public in London cannot succeed – how, in good honor, could he send his troops into battle with a plan [he says] would fail?

 

I think he would resign. And that would be a crisis for the Obama administration.

On the failure of Chicago’s Olympic bid:

Well, [Obama] used a sports analogy. [So] let's do a tally. He goes abroad, he denigrates America over and over again, he apologizes for everything from Hiroshima to everything that the Bush administration ever did, as a way to rebrand America, ingratiate himself and restore our leadership and what does he get?

 

Rio.

 

It was almost unimaginable that a president would actually go abroad if he didn't have it wired. And look, this was the perfect audience for him, a collection of global Euro-trash who love all this anti-American stuff, and it didn't even work on them.

10/05 12:16 PMShare