The Military

President Obama's idea to call President George W. Bush on Tuesday before he speaks from the Oval Office about the end of combat operations in Iraq is a good one. And Obama has rightly concluded that the words "mission accomplished" won't be appropriate for tomorrow night's address. In what will be his second Oval Office address, Obama will thank our men and women in uniform — and their families — for their service and sacrifice in that more than seven-year-old war and acknowledge the challenges that remain. And he admits he will be taking credit as well for a promise kept. In his radio address this weekend Obama said he promised as a candidate to end the Iraq war. "As president this is what I am doing. We have brought home more than 90,000 troops since I toook office," Obama said.

It will be interesting to see the gloss put on the end of U.S. combat operations in Iraq by President Obama in his Oval Office address tomorrow night.

Let’s face it, the Democrats are in an election cycle and the president will repeat that he has kept his election promise to end the combat mission in Iraq by the end of August 2010 and to pull out U.S. soldiers by the end of next year.

(Sometimes, the best way to support the troops is to support the people who provide that service. In the Bay Area, we have a lot of people really committed to this. Here's something in their own words. /craig)

VA struggles mightily to reach Veterans and their families to ensure they know what benefits they have coming to them — healthcare, education, home loans, jobs, etc. — but it's not easy. Its especially challenging in the Bay Area, where most of our newest combat Veterans are National Guard and Reserves. It’s even hard for them to connect to each other sometimes. Read more...

“The play's the thing,” Hamlet said as he went to work to find out who killed his father, “wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.”

Play and work. Work and play.

If you Google “play,” you get 1.93 billion hits. If you Google “work,” you get 2.3 billion. Work usually beats play.

If you play at work, you could get fired from your job.

If you work at play, you could turn out to be Eric Clapton.

Many in the world of armchair quarterbacks are giving President Obama high marks for his handling of the Gen. Stanley McChrystal implosion and subsequent resignation. After all, Obama faced a difficult decision; some in the media world were even dubbing it a “game changer” for his presidency. No matter how difficult one scores the “test” Obama faced, the bottom line is he passed.

For my part, I felt Obama only had one option. Insubordination cannot be tolerated, especially within the military and that far up on the chain of command. I would wager that, for many Americans, too, the president really had one option.

Let's hope the scandal Gen. Stanley McCrystal created helped President Obama realize just how divided and dysfunctional his national-security team appears to be when it comes to our longest-ever war in Afghanistan. The choice of Gen. David Petraeus was meant to calm and unify the ranks and the remaining team members who must maintain continuity and focus on the mission. But a new general also raises new questions about the largest question mark hanging over Obama's Afghan policy — are we really drawing down next year? Read more...

Don't you just love all the writers, like me, who find it necessary to add a "full disclosure,” which is supposed to provide absolute honesty about a potential conflict of interest?

Of course, a really FULL disclosure would go something like this: "Full disclosure: This reporter is advocating this point of view because it will make him a ton of money.” Or “because he is being blackmailed into saying it by someone who has pictures of him with a hooker.” Or my personal favorite: "Full disclosure: I have no earthly idea what I'm talking about."

Shifting leadership is an effect rather than a cause of disintegrating policy, and the shift from Gen. Stanley McChrystal to David Petraeus — back to Petraeus — seems OK in that it brings a familiar face and the appearance of stabilization to an Afghanistan war policy on CTD status. (Not yet dead, but Circling the Drain.)

Let’s hope he’s not a fainter. But things are getting bad now in the Gulf. A liberal blog reports that there’s “been a viral message spreading over the web that there's a life and earth threatening methane bubble in the gulf, caused by the gushing well, which will explode and even cause an earthquake and a real volcano, in some versions of the story. Some accuse Obama of hiding nefarious goings on.”

The generals have been having a wild time of it lately. It was just a little over a week ago that Gen. David Petraeus, the head of Central Command, physically passed out right there for the world to see as he testified before a congressional committee. Now it's Gen. Stanley McChrystal's turn to collapse — or least for his career to. Petraeus apparently had not had enough liquids. McChrystal was done in because he and his aides spouted off in front of a reporter.

Rolling Stone magazine was iconic a couple of decades ago.

It was a great place to read about cultural trends, about pot, about rock 'n' roll, and every once in while, it had an interesting political story.

Rolling Stone is now going all retro on us. It suddenly has a story that might have a major-league impact on our foreign policy, on how our president is perceived overseas, and more importantly, how our enemies view us.

In this week’s version, as I am sure you have all heard, Rolling Stone does a profile of the general who is in charge of our wartime strategy in Afghanistan.