Afghanistan: Mission Impossible

25 June 2010 |permalink | email article

A blunt column by George F. Will, the Pulitzer-Prize winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics, caught my attention in the wake of the abrupt firing by President Obama of Gen. Stanley McChrystal on Wednesday.

What’s interesting about Will is that he’s unpredictable as evidenced by his challenge to the Bush administration – and U.S. government representatives in Iraq – to be more honest about the difficulties the United States faced in rebuilding and maintaining order in Iraq.

He’s also not shy in expressing some tough views about Afghanistan and suggesting that the American undertaking there is a fool’s errand and McChrystal breathtakingly foolish.

“Counterinsurgency, as defined by McChrystal’s successor, Gen. David Petraeus, and tepidly embraced by Barack Obama for a year or so, does not just involve nation-building, it is nation-building.”

Will, discussing what can happen when the military can-do culture collides with a cannot-be-done assignment. writes that in this toxicity, “Afghanistan is Vietnam redux.”

He notes that with the Afghan mission entering a crucial military phase soon in Kandahar, the cradle of the Taliban, it may be said that McChrystal is indispensable. ”Any who say that should heed the words of another general, one of the 20th century’s greatest leaders and realists. Charles de Gaulle said: The graveyards are full of indispensable men.”

NFL stadium site

The time will come when an NFL team returns to Los Angeles. The Anschutz Entertainment Group is focused on putting a stadium near the downtown Convention Center. It wants an exemption from the state’s environmental laws because the state Legislature granted a waiver to a stadium proposed by developer Ed Roski Jr. in the City of Industry east of downtown. The nonprofit Planning and Conservation League has said that one key difference is that Roski has conducted an environmental impact report on his project, whereas none exists for the downtown L.A. stadium. It’s a first down for Roski.

Overheard

“Ms. Kagan has less legal experience than any judge in the last 50 years. Most of her work has been political work.” – Sen. Jeff Sessions, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, echoing a rising Republican effort to slow down the confirmation of Elena Kagan by President Obama’s solicitor general to the Supreme Court, citing her lack of judicial experience. It’s an argument that won’t hunt. 

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