Comments on the Belmont Club "The McChrystal letter"

This uncertainty about what COIN entails is after 7 years in which the Democrats sat around in think tanks like Brookings, presumably thinking, and various faculty lounges, Senate cloak rooms and bath rooms, conferences like Davros or Editorial Board sit downs. All that time they assured the nation was used to come up with an alternative to ChimpyMcbushitlercheney that was going to be ready they said on Day 1. We are now less than 2 weeks from 10 months into this administration and they are still whining that the dog ate their homework.

McChrystal is exercising the standard military response to an incompetent superior, literalism. You carefully and slowly repeat back the orders that he did not really mean for you to take seriously, after all everyone knows it was just window dressing for the rubes, and then you explain to everyone what the plan is and the consequences for not doing it. Then you sit back and look at your boss with great sincerity.

-------
Mad Fiddler,
The current administration could teach tricks to tropical skin diseases.
That's a keeper.

anton,
... does Herman sound like he is chanelling Vivo?
Those with multiple personalities often have no personality at all.

Marty,
1. PLEASE stop feeding the troll!!!
Concur.

Our genial host is to be congratulated for demonstrating that a mature community can self regulate without resorting to LGF style purges. I would still like some of those nice features like controlled or auto refresh. Even better would be an Ignore button.

Scythianeedle,
(who wants recalls everywhere)
The recall of Davis happened because of California's unique Constitution. While I agree with those who have pointed out that the United States is a Constitutional Republic and not a direct Democracy, I do not think that California has been ill served by those elements, recall and referendum, that are most democratic.

The myth of transferable costs is always easier to sell in a larger polity. Left to itself Rhode Island might prove as Improvident as California but there are no distant Scrooge McDucks in the little state that they can send their bills to. Perhaps the best thing to do with states like California and New York is break them up. If 50,000 was the upper bound of a viable Greek polis then what is the maximum size of a solvent state in a federal republic?

BTW, lost contact with PJM for a bit, was it a DNS attack?

Oct 8, 2009 - 12:07 pm