petraeus
Gates Announces Two More Brigades for Afghanistan
The good thing about staying on as defense secretary is that you can fly into Kandahar whenever you feel like it. And, like a baller, you can announce new troop deployments. Yochi Dreazen hangs out with Bob Gates and reports:
Productive Obama-Military Relationship Possible
When President-elect Barack Obama met with Gen. David Petraeus in July, he struck the right tone. Will the White House relationship with the military keep the same tenor?
Hmmm, Maybe Petraeus Wasn’t So Hot on Going to Syria
On Friday, I flagged an ABC story reporting that Gen. David Petraeus had requested permission to talk with the Syrian government as part of his new job as head of Central Command, only to be shot down by the Bush administration. I speculated that it might be another example of congruence with Sen. Barack Obama’s [...]
Petraeus, Like Obama, Wanted Talks With Syria
Remember how I wrote earlier this month that Gen. David Petraeus’ public statements appeared to implicitly back Sen. Barack Obama’s foreign policy? Here’s another example.
According to ABC, the incoming Centcom commander — who takes over at 10 a.m. today, as a matter of fact — wanted to make a visit to the Syrian government. Of [...]
OH NOES! Negotiating With the Taliban!!!1
In the course of a spittle-inflected Small Wars Journal diatribe against my friend Nir Rosen for the alleged moral failing of embedding with the Taliban, Atlantic correspondent Bing West — whose recent book I preliminarily praised in TWI — offers this bit of dubious moral outrage:
Having told the reader what his intent was, Rosen described [...]
Obama Seems to Embrace U.S.-Iraq Deal; All Troops Home in 2011?
Something else that’s interesting in Joe Klein’s interview with Sen. Barack Obama.
Yesterday we saw John McCain severely misrepresent what the impending U.S.-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) says, incorrectly insisting that its date-certain deadlines for U.S. troop withdrawals are based on “conditions” on the ground. Here Klein asks Obama to revisit his 2007 questions to [...]
Respect The Petraeus
Joe Klein conducted a fascinating interview with Sen. Barack Obama recently, and he’s just put the transcript online.
There’s a lot to sift through, particularly from a foreign-policy perspective. But check out Obama’s account of his July meeting in Baghdad with Gen. David Petraeus, now head of U.S. Central Command and with whom a prospective President [...]
Petraeus and Rumsfeld: Awwwwwwwkward
One thing I didn’t mention in my just-published piece about Gen. David Petraeus’ talk before the Heritage Foundation today: Donald Rumsfeld was there. And it was awkward.
For starters, Rumsfeld is the most inconvenient figure in the GOP foreign-policy establishment, a modern-day Robert McNamara whose name is synonymous with self-deception, outright deception, arrogance and failure.
Petraeus Talk Bolsters Obama
Gen. David Petraeus repeatedly made statements that supported Barack Obama’s foreign-policy proposals or cut against John McCain’s during a talk on Wednesday.
McKiernan Not Hot on ‘Sons of Afghanistan’ Idea
Earlier today I wondered what Gen. David McKiernan, commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, thought about empowering tribal forces to augment Afghan police and soldiers — that is, creating a “Sons of Afghanistan” force like the Sons of Iraq. I posed the question to McKiernan at a press conference today. The short answer: not a [...]
