The Dear Dope scurries to cover his skinny butt

I was happy to hear that the Dear Dope sat down with his Afghan commander last week. Now Wes Pruden tells us why:

“Gen. McChrystal, in remarks to the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, says [Biden’s] strategy [of a narrower mission] is "shortsighted" and would make Afghanistan something of a "chaos-istan," a sanctuary for terrorism once the government falls to the Taliban. For his pains, he was summoned by the president to a 25-minute chewing out aboard Air Force One on the tarmac at Copenhagen airport.


Wow. Here I thought that the Dear Dope was meeting with his commander to iron out a war strategy. Turns out the only strategy being ironed out was the Dear Dope’s strategy for keeping his generals in line. That’s never a good sign. Having a general out there openly questioning his civilian bosses is bad juju. Think Truman recalling Macarthur during the Korean War. Think an NFL quarterback ignoring the coach and calling his own plays. Hey if the coach is a Dope with no NFL experience and the quarterback is Peyton Manning, who you gonna trust?

Now it turns out that McChrystal and the Dear Dope have met or spoken several times since. Hmmmmmmm. The Dear Dope speaks to his commander one time in 70 days. When that bit of disturbing news becomes public, the Dear Dope is hanging around with McChrystal as if he were a whitey hating Chicago preacher or something.

The Dear Dope is faced with an embarrassing story about his lack of leadership and laissez-faire style of war management, and suddenly he can’t be hands-on or hang out with McChrystal enough. Only a Kool-Aid drinking Dear-Dope-a-bot could possibly believe that these coincidences aren’t an indication that the Dear Dope is more worried about his own image than the safety of our troops in Afghanistan. If that were not the case and the Dear Dope thought his approach to the Afghan War was correct, he would continue to ignore his commanders.

You can almost hear the Dear Dope at breakfast as opens his briefing book, “Damn, another memo from McChrystal on Afghanistan. Can’t I just eat my waffle?”