BRITISH VIEW OF OBAMA'S AFGHAN ANTICS – AT 6:50 A.M. ET:  The Brits were among the first of our allies to become skeptical about our prince, and that skepticism has only grown. 

British reporters at the G-20 in Toronto have reported meetings between Obama and newly elected Prime Minister David Cameron with barely concealed hostility toward the president.  Obama is believed to have tried to end the special relationship between Britain and America, which would certainly be consistent with Obama's world view.  Democracies:  Imperialists.  Dictatorships:  We must reach out.

Now Toby Harnden of The Telegraph examines Obama's Afghanistan moves, and tut tuts:

How wrong the conventional wisdom can be. Obama's actions in dragging McChrystal back to Washington and personally sacking him in as dramatic a fashion as possible in fact displayed weakness. They also avoided the real problem - his confused Afghanistan policy and dysfunctional civilian team.

No one would pretend that the profane, juvenile banter of McChrystal and his aides was clever or appropriate, never mind in the presence of an iconoclastic Rolling Stone reporter. The general, a legendary combat leader who engaged in fire fights in Iraq alongside SAS troopers while in his 50s, deserved to be reprimanded.

Inartful and ill-advised as the words were, however, they also spoke to a justifiable deep frustration within the US military in Afghanistan and contained a degree of truth about Obama's civilian officials that made the famously thin-skinned President decidedly uncomfortable.

I'm glad someone said it.

Team America, of course, was a bit dismissive of Obama himself and that cannot have gone down well with the self-regarding occupant of the Oval Office. Even more difficult to take must have been the warm words they had for Hillary Clinton, his Secretary of State, who large numbers of Democrats and even many Republicans now wish had prevailed in 2008.

Obama will find a way to get Hillary.  Maybe an amorous male intern with a mother complex...

It has not escaped the attention of the anti-war Left that although firing McChrystal was justified as a way of asserting civilian control over the military, the result is the opposite. Petraeus is a much more popular figure than Obama and has deeper ties across the full spectrum of the Washington establishment than any general since Colin Powell (who, incidentally, Obama consulted about firing McChrystal).

The reality is that Petraeus can pretty much do what he wants now. Obama probably wouldn't sack him if he kneed Biden in the groin. Petraeus, as was his acolyte McChrystal, is rightly sceptical about Obama's promise to start withdrawing troops from July 2011.

The Obama, Clinton, Petraeus axis will be the most fascinating to watch in the coming two years...unless one or more resign.

So Obama would do well to avoid congratulating himself on winning last week's news cycle by brutally ending McChrystal's illustrious career. He has further alienated the broader military constituency and done nothing to curtail the in-fighting among his top foreign policy officials...

COMMENT:  What an endorsement.  What visitor from Mars would know that Obama was seen as a near- godlike figure less than two years ago.  Now, as it was reported, his first question upon arriving in Canada for the G-20 was where the good golf courses were.

June 27, 2010