Gotta love the juxtaposition of this post by Peter Wehner over at Commentary Contentions and the ad that happened to appear when I clicked over to read it:

I’m with Academic Elephant on this one:

But now we have OBL, and it is an opportunity for us to prove ourselves as Americans. For those of us on the right, we should simply thank God for a CIA Director who took the time to develop the appropriate plan, a Secretary of Defense who lent him sufficient man and firepower, and a President who was decisive enough to pull the trigger at the right moment. This sort of leadership should not be parsed or resented. For their part, our fellow citizens on the left might consider giving up the relentless drumbeat of “war crimes” for those who did so much of the long and lonely work to make this possible. Even with the so-called “harsh” interrogation techniques used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, it took years to put together the pieces. How many honestly regret those techniques this morning, or that we had Guantanamo to house KSM and his colleagues for further reference?

RELATED:  Did enhanced interrogation lead U.S. to Osama bin Laden? Yes, apparently they did.

UPDATE:  Jennifer Rubin:  ”This is anAmerican victory, triumph shared by two presidents and a magnificent accomplishment for all the military and intelligence officials who worked to see this day.”  Ditto that.

Via a variety of text from readers and friends, on Sunday night, I learned that good news that Osama bin Laden has been dispatched to join Saddam Hussein and Adolf Hitler in the lowest circles of Hell. I join former President Bush in congratulating President Obama and the men and women of our armed forces who accomplished the deed. In a statement, Bush said:

Earlier this evening, President Obama called to inform me that American forces killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of the al Qaeda network that attacked America on September 11, 2001.

I congratulated him and the men and women of our military and intelligence communities who devoted their lives to this mission. They have our everlasting gratitude.

Our intelligence community and the Navy SEAL Team Six who carried out the operation deserve the bulk of the credit, but they could not have done it without the authorization of the President of the United States.  This one Barack Obama got right.

Good job, Mr. President.

UPDATE:   Over the Washington Examiner, Philip Klein has some background on the operation that go Osama.  The president has met five times with his national security team since they learned about the compound last February and gave the go-ahead for operation this past Friday.  (Read the whole thing.)

Sorry, couldn’t get a copy of this song with actual footage from the Wizard of Oz. Still it does express the sentiment of all Americans tonight:

UP-UPDATE: From the president’s speech:

As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not –- and never will be -– at war with Islam. I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam. Bin Laden was not a Muslim leader; he was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own. So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.

Indeed.

UP-UP-UPDATE:  ”Evil,” John Podhoretz writes, “has been met, and defeated.” On the same blog, but in a different post, Abe Greenwald reminds us, “It is not in the American DNA to waver, to give up, or to shirk its responsibilities. The U.S. meets its challenges.” (more…)

Many  – on both sides of the political aisle — faulted then-President George W. Bush and his administration for failing to anticipate the “insurgency” which followed our speedy liberation of Iraq in 2003.  The same criticisms could be leveled against the incumbent and his team for failing to anticipate the difficulty of ousting Libya’s Moammar Gaddafi.  On Friday, blogger  Robert Stacy McCain asked if we were losing in Libya:

Scarcely three weeks after the U.S. military launched Operation Odyssey Dawn, the war in Libya is beginning to look like President Obama’s worst failure to date. While official Washington and the political press have been focused on budget negotiations and the prospect of a federal government shutdown, a foreign-policy disaster has been slowly unfolding in the deserts of the North African nation that Col. Moammar Gaddafi has ruled for more than four decades.

Read the whole thing.

Offering criticisms similar to those this other McCain delineates, George Will wonders at the administration’s “mission meander” in North Africa, “At about this point in foreign policy misadventures, the usual question is: What is Plan B? Today’s question is: What was Plan A?”

It seems almost as  if the president believed he didn’t need a plan, but could lead by his presence alone.

When I followed the 2008 campaign on the television monitors at my gym, I had the sense the then-junior Senator from Illinois would go far.  Barack Obama came across well on TV.  And in today’s politics, that type of presence puts a candidate head and shoulders above the rest.

If you judged the president’s remarks last night on Libya not by his words, but by his appearance on television, well then, his speech on Libya last night was a failure.  I watched it while at the gym.  He seemed uncomfortable with this address, as if it were an unfortunate obligation of his profession, something that he had to do, but wanted to get over with it as quickly as possible.  His heart did not seem in it.

Glenn Reynolds who did see it offers a similar evaluation, “Eerily like a Bush speech, but without the conviction.”  While it may have sounded like a Bush speech, Ann Althouse noticed ”the implicit disrespect for George Bush:”

In this effort, the United States has not acted alone….

“When”, the diva asked, “did we act alone? Is he trying to make us misremember what Bush did?”  Not quite misremember, but instead remind us of the liberal talking point on Iraq, that W was a cowboy who went it alone when the facts (for those of us who remember them correctly) tell a much different story.

John Hinderaker also found the incumbent sniping at his predecessor by making a contrast which “made little sense“.  John offered the consensus view of speech’s conservative critics, that the president couldn’t “resist hedging his bets. Thus, tonight’s speech included a little bit of everything.”

In her excellent analysis of the speech, Jennifer Rubin notes that while Obama’s sentence, “the ability of our people to reach their potential, to make wise choices with our resources, to enlarge the prosperity that serves as a wellspring of our power, and to live the values that we hold so dear”, represents “the perfect encapsulation of Bush’s freedom agenda“, the incumbent “can’t bring himself to embrace the view of those conservatives, you know the ones who pushed to liberate Iraq.”

Victor Davis Hanson offers the best summation of the critiques I read: (more…)

Log Cabin Executive Director R. Clarke Cooper is not the only one contending that our normally loquacious ”Commander-in-Chief owes an explanation to the American people” for the Libya operation.  In her column on Friday, Peggy Noonan noted the same thing:

I cannot for the life of me see how an American president can launch a serious military action without a full and formal national address in which he explains to the American people why he is doing what he is doing, why it is right, and why it is very much in the national interest. He referred to his aims in parts of speeches and appearances when he was in South America, but now he’s home. More is needed, more is warranted, and more is deserved. He has to sit at that big desk and explain his thinking, put forward the facts as he sees them, and try to garner public support. He has to make a case for his own actions. It’s what presidents do!

Read the whole thing.  The Athena of punditry is back on her game.  Her words must have resonated with the administration; not too long after they appeared on the Wall Street Journal’s web-page, the White House announced that the president would be delivering a speech today on the Libya operation.

Noting the “firestorm of criticism about President Obama’s failure to lead on Libya and his refusal to articulate his goal(s) for the war,” Jennifer Rubin found it odd when the administration made the announcement in a “late afternoon ‘news dump’”, trying ”to slip his about-face by the media before the weekend”.   Normally, presidents, she remarked, can’t wait to get their message across.

Maybe the reason this president is speaking out only reluctantly on Libya is that he really doesn’t have a message.  He chose to act, not out of principle, but out of fear, fear that Gadhafi’s survival would mean continued tension in Libya, with ever higher oil prices.  And he knows that if gas remains at or near $4 a gallon, his reelection prospects would look particularly bleak.  In short, this is all about keeping oil prices down.   (more…)

“Isn’t this,” Jennifer Rubin asks, “proof that George W. Bush’s rap as a ‘unilateralist’ is bunk?“

President Barack Obama has touted his emphasis on multilateralism in the U.S. military intervention in Libya, but, for political, operational, and legal reasons, Obama’s “coalition of the willing” is smaller than any major multilateral operation since the end of the Cold War. The Cable compiled a chart listing all the countries that contributed at least some military assets to the five major military operations in which the United States participated in a coalition during the last 20 years: the 1991 Gulf War (32 countries participating), the 1995 Bosnia mission (24 countries), the 1999 Kosovo mission (19 countries), the 2002 invasion of Afghanistan (48 countries), and the 2003 invasion of Iraq (40 countries), at the height of the size of each coalition. As of today, only 15 countries, including the United States, have committed to providing a military contribution to the Libya war.

. . . .

Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said that the administration’s effort to build the coalition was hampered by its stated desire to hand off the leadership of the Libya intervention to NATO.  

“[I]f you [focus on the handoff], you don’t deserve a lot of credit for leadership,” he said. “Obama in his deference to [getting out of the lead] has not only wanted other countries to do as much as they could, he has essentially forgone his responsibility to build the coalition.”

Is that scholar from a left-of-center think tank thus saying that we’d be better off with the type of leadership George W. Bush provided?

How times have changed.  It’s now becoming an almost common practice for Log Cabin to do what Republican organizations are wont to do:  criticize a Democratic office holder — and with good conservative reason.

Just received this statement in my in-box:

Log Cabin Republicans call into question the mission and purpose of a United States role in coalition operations to secure the United Nations mandated No-fly Zone over Libya.  There remains no clear objective to Operation Odyssey Dawn, Congress was consulted late in the process and now President Obama has relinquished command and control.

“It is not clear if the United States mission is to liberate the Libyan people from the shackles of the deranged dictator, Moammar Gaddafi.  What is clear to foreign governments President Obama often lies prostrate before is that military actions are secondary to diplomatic perceptions. Noting such dithering and weakness, Americans should not be surprised to learn Brazil concurred with China to call for a cease fire instead of supporting the United Nations Security Council resolution for a No-fly Zone.  This occurred within hours of Obama’s ballyhooed state visit to Brazil.  Further, Russian officials are calling the cobbled together operation ‘a medieval crusade.’  Without a clear mission and objective, Libya will likely devolve into another Somalia where United Nations presence remains to this day.  The Commander-in-Chief owes an explanation to the American people, especially our service members, of what our role is in Libya,” said R. Clarke Cooper, Log Cabin Republicans Executive Director.

Nice to see Log Cabin sounding like other right-of-center outfits.

Will ANSWER be in front of the White House tomorrow yelling “No Blood For Oil!” ????

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Remember, the American Left wants you to believe the GZM is good, nothing to worry about, and Islam is the “Religion of Peace”.

The new imam at the Ground Zero mosque and cultural center believes people who are gay were probably abused as children and that people who leave Islam and preach a new religion should be jailed.

Abdallah Adhami’s remarks on homosexuals, religious freedom and other topics have brought renewed criticism of the proposed community center and mosque near the World Trade Center site, which purports to be an inclusive organization.

Adhami, in a lecture on the Web site of his nonprofit, Sakeenah, says being gay is a “painful trial” caused by past trauma.

“An enormously overwhelming percentage of people struggle with homosexual feeling because of some form of violent emotional or sexual abuse at some point in their life,” he says. “A small, tiny percentage of people are born with a natural inclination that they cannot explain. You find this in the animal kingdom at some level as well.”

Charming.  The Gay Left would be taking to the streets if this Imam’s last name was “Palin”.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Let’s hope the North is paying attention:

In a daring high-seas rescue, South Korean navy commandos today stormed a freighter that’s been held hostage for a week in the Arabian Sea, killing eight Somali pirates and freeing 21 crew members.

Five other pirates were captured. The ship’s captain was shot in the stomach by the pirates, but he’s expected to survive, South Korea said.

“Our special forces stormed the hijacked Samho Jewelry earlier today and freed all hostages,” Colonel Lee Bung-woo, a spokesman for South Korea’s joint chiefs of staff, told The Guardian and other reporters in Seoul. “During the operation, our forces killed some Somali pirates, and all of the hostages were confirmed alive.”

Seems our allies in the Land of the Morning Calm have the right strategy and tactics to deal with piracy in the Arabian sea.

It is, in large measure, because of George W. Bush that I started blogging.  While I had been so incensed by his decision to back the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) in February 2004 that I wrote in Rudy Giuliani in the California primary and had, in March of that year, considered voting Libertarian in the fall election, I came around while following John Kerry’s campaign.

That Democrat seemed more interested in playing to Democratic critics of W and posturing for the media than in addressing the real security threats to our nation.

And while Bush had an imperfect record on domestic issues and intervened in an issue — amending the federal constitution — from which that charter excludes the executive, he did demonstrate a clear recognition of the need to take an aggressive stance against the enemies of the United States.  By the summer of 2004, I was back to supporting his reelection.

It would seem that most gay Republicans would understand that, while disappointed with his stance on the FMA, the nation faced more pressing challenges.  And John Kerry was clearly not up to those challenges.  With so much at stake, Log Cabin could at least have been more diplomatic in the manner of its non-endorsement.  But, they did it in a manner clearly designed to hurt George W. Bush and, with recent revelations about their funding made manifest in recent months confirming suspicion we then had, in a manner intended to help John Kerry.  Not a very responsible thing for a Republican organization to do in time of war.

Thus, when I read Bruce’s post telling Log Cabin to stick it, I eagerly e-mailed him thanking him for speaking up — and later accepted his invitation to join this then-fledgling blog.

I say all this as prelude to a passage which particularly struck me in the former president’s memoir.  When he asked Dick Cheney to serve as his running mate, that great and good man told the then-governor of Texas that his daughter was gay.  ”I could tell,” Bush wrote

. . . what he meant by the way he said it.  Dick clearly loved his daughter.  I felt he was gauging my tolerance.  ”If you have a problem with this, I’m not your man,” he was essentially saying.

I smiled at him and said, “Dick, take your time.  Please talk to Lynne.  And I could not care less about Mary’s orientation.

While we all may remain disappointed about the former president’s stand on FMA, we continue to accumulate evidence that popular notions of his supposed bigotry in the gay community notwithstanding, George W. Bush does not hate gay people.

It would be nice if folks in the gay community acknowledged W’s reaction to his running mate’s openness about his daughter’s sexuality — and to that vice president’s sterling record on gay issues.

Is there an active terror operation, or test-of-security, underway now in the USA by Al-Qaeda of Yemen?

FOX NEWS URGENT: U.S. and international authorities investigate whether multiple suspicious packages originating from Yemen found aboard UPS flights landing in Newark, N.J., Philadelphia and England are part of a terror group’s rehearsal for a mail bomb attack.

CBS News reports that the Joint Terrorism Task Force wants to find 10-20 packages sent out of Sanna, Yemen.

Please stay tuned to up to the minute news sources as authorities get a handle on what is going on.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Wonder if this has anything to do with General David Petraeus taking over in Afghanistan:

American and Afghan forces have been routing the Taliban in much of Kandahar Province in recent weeks, forcing many hardened fighters, faced with the buildup of American forces, to flee strongholds they have held for years, NATOcommanders, local Afghan officials and residents of the region said.

A series of civilian and military operations around the strategic southern province, made possible after a force of 12,000 American and NATO troops reached full strength here in the late summer, has persuaded Afghan and Western officials that the Taliban will have a hard time returning to areas they had controlled in the province that was their base.

Let’s hope this leads to more successes in the Afghan theater — and  hope as well that further victories may cause the president to reconsider his commitment to start withdrawing our troops in July 2011.

While the commanders in the field and the brave men and women who executed the plan deserve the bulk of the credit, we should also acknowledge President Obama who wisely chose to put Petraeus in charge of Afghan operations.

Over at Big Government, Kristinn Taylor and Andrea Shea King are covering a story which, if it involved Republicans, would not only make the papers in the politicians’ district, but would likely generate national news as well.

You see, there is evidence that my Congressman and my (junior) Senator may have ”helped a group of radical antiwar activists cross the Iraqi-Jordanian border in order to deliver aid to families of enemy insurgents” in Fallujah at a time when said insurgents were fighting American troops:

In December 2004, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) and Rep. Henry Waxman (D) [as well as fellow Democratic Reps. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio and Raul Grijalva of Arizona] each sent letters of diplomatic courtesy to the U.S. Embassy in Amman, Jordan, requesting assistance for members of the radical group Global Exchange and the antiwar group Palisadians for Peace.

The letters, according to a January 4, 2005 article written by Islam Online correspondent Adam Wild Aba, were needed in order to successfully deliver supplies to the Iraqi people. The Pentagon had previously denied the groups access to the embattled region, citing security concerns. Waxman’s letter to Consul General Daniel Goodspeed, dated December 14, 2004, requested assistance on behalf of Palisadians for Peace and Global Exchange as they sought to set up a “peace camp” to benefit Iraqi families. Now, with no clear record of who specifically was given the more than $600,000 in cash and goods that the groups brought into the warzone, concerned families of soldiers killed while fighting in the War on Terror are beginning to ask questions.

Waxman has released his letter, but as Taylor and King report, “Boxer’s Capitol Hill staff is stonewalling a request by military mother Beverly Perlson for a copy of a reported diplomatic letter provided by the California Democrat to the leftwing group Code Pink/Global Exchange in support of the delivery of $600,000 in cash and aid to the ‘other side’ in Fallujah, Iraq in late 2004.“

The 28-year Washington veteran should be grateful for a media which looks the other way when she misrepresents her record or ignores serious questions about her service.  Perlson has raised just such a question, one directly related to Mrs. Boxer’s official duties and the career politician gives her the runaround. (more…)

It is pretty self-explanatory.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

Under the command of two Commanders-in-Chiefs, our US Armed Forces have performed brilliantly since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003.  The last full combat brigade left Iraq left Wednesday with little of the media coverage that began with “Shock and Awe”, “Baghdad Bob”, and eventually saw Saddam cowering in a spider hole.

When the men and women of Fourth Brigade, Second Infantry Division deployed to Iraq in April 2007 as part of President Bush’s surge, American soldiers were being killed or wounded at a rate of about 750 a month, the country was falling to sectarian mayhem, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid had declared that the war was “lost.”

On Wednesday, the “Raiders” became the last combat brigade to leave Iraq, having helped to defeat an insurgency, secure a democracy and uphold the honor of American arms.

The classic lament about the war in Iraq is that it achieved little at a huge cost in American lives, treasure and reputation. That view rests on a kind of amnesia about the nature of Saddam Hussein’s regime, his 12-year defiance of binding U.N. resolutions, the threat he posed to its neighbors, the belief—shared by the Clinton and Bush Administrations and intelligence services world-wide—that he was armed with weapons of mass destruction, the complete corruption of the U.N. sanctions regime designed to contain him, and the fact that he intended to restart his WMD programs once the sanctions had collapsed.

Those were the realities when the coalition marched into Iraq. In supporting the war on the eve of that invasion, we noted that “the law of unintended consequences hasn’t been repealed” and that “toppling Saddam is a long-term undertaking,” while warning that “liberal pundits and politicians are fickle interventionists” who were “apt to run for moral cover” when the going got tough. As they did.

Their opposition might well have led to defeat had not Mr. Bush defied Congress and the recommendations of his own Iraq Study Group in favor of the 2007 surge, which history will likely recall as Mr. Bush’s finest hour. To his credit, President Obama has also delivered on the “responsible withdrawal” he promised in his campaign.

This admirable American effort has now given Iraqis the opportunity to govern themselves democratically. We supported the Iraq invasion primarily for reasons of U.S. national security. But a successful war also held the promise that it could create, in a major Arab state, a model for governance that would result in something better than the secular or religious dictatorships that have so often bred brutality and radicalism—which has increasingly reached our own shores. The fact that Iraq has a functioning judiciary, and that Iraqi voters have rejected their most sectarian parties at the polls, is cause for hope that the country is moving in that direction.

This is true despite the five months of political stalemate that have gripped the country since March’s parliamentary elections resulted in an effective tie between Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and his principal challenger Ayad Allawi. Political gridlock is frustrating, but it is sometimes a function of democratic politics. We will soon learn if Iraqi politicians can meet the responsibilities of the democratic moment that American and British blood and treasure have given them.

They will have to do so despite the continuing spoiler role played by Iraq’s neighbors—Syria, Saudi Arabia and Iran—who fear a democratic, or Shiite-led, state in their midst. The withdrawal of U.S. combat forces will only increase their ambition to create more trouble.

That makes the mission of the 50,000 U.S. troops that will remain as trainers, advisers and special-ops forces until the end of 2011 all the more crucial. It should also provide incentive for Washington and Baghdad to negotiate a more permanent U.S. military presence, both as a balancing force within the country and especially as a hedge against Iran. Having sacrificed so much for Iraq’s freedom, the U.S. should attempt to reap the shared strategic benefits of a longer-term alliance, as we did after World War II with Japan and Germany.

On the eve of war in 2003, we wrote: “About one thing we have no doubt: the courage of the Americans who will fight in our defense.” Along with all of their comrades in arms, the men and women of Fourth Brigade, Second Infantry have fully vindicated that conviction. Somewhere down the road, we trust that August 18, 2010 will be remembered as Victory in Iraq day.

August 18 SHOULD be VICTORY IN IRAQ DAY if for no other reason than to mark then end of the success that our original mission, further supplemented by the brave decision by President Bush to launch the surge in 2007, is complete.  Yes, US forces will remain as advisors for another year.  But “The War” in Iraq is over.

Where are the homecoming parades?  Where is the outpouring of love of nation toward our brave men and women who were thrust out of their lives when this phase of the Global War began on September 11, 2003?

We’ve made mistakes.  We found no WMD that the entire world’s intel apparatus said we would.  As in past wars, America leaves no imperialist governance behind.  We helped formed a democratic state in the Middle East that now must continue to bloom on its own.  We stole no oil.  We will only leave Americans in Iraq at the behest of its people, or where the blood of the brave have fallen into the hot sand and are never to be returned to the homeland.

We should be celebrating this week.  But we are not.  There are many reasons why.  But when you see a uniformed member of our Armed Forces this Summer and Fall — please stop them and thank them for their and and their families sacrifices.  They are our Greatest Generation and will most likely be called on again to defend and protect the United States of America.

BE PROUD AMERICA:  We liberated a nation of 18 million oppressed people from a satanic dictator who hijacked the Muslim faith for his own glory and power.  BE PROUD!

Thank you to President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretarys Rumsfeld & Gates, and General Petreaus.  You won the war as our leaders.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

I’m not sure what is more disturbing.

This….

As part of “Inspire,” a 67-page English-language Al Qaeda magazine, Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — who has been linked to the botched Times Square bombing and cited as inspiration for the Fort Hood massacre and the plot of two New Jersey men to kill U.S. soldiers — targeted the Seattle cartoonist for “assassination,” along with others who have participated in her campaign.

“The large number of participants makes it easier for us because there are more targets to choose from in addition to the difficulty of the government offering all of them special protection,” wrote al-Awlaki, who is an American citizen. “But even then our campaign should not be limited to only those who are active participants.”

He warned that “assassinations, bombings and acts of arson” are all legitimate forms of revenge against the creators of blasphemous depictions of Muhammad.

<…>

The woman created her version of “Everybody Draw Muhammad” in late April, days after a Seattle cartoonist launched the online campaign to protest Comedy Central’s censoring of an episode of “South Park,” in which the Prophet Muhammad was depicted wearing a bear costume. The Canadian woman said she will no longer act as the administrator of such a page.

“I just want to be quiet now,” she continued. “I wish I didn’t do this.”

or this…

The 27-year-old Facebook page creator — a Canadian woman who asked not to be identified due to fears of reprisal — told FoxNews.com that she was visited at her home last week by Royal Canadian Mounted Police officials who advised her to remove her page and not to talk to reporters.

Ah, the chilling effect of the death threat is alive and well here in The West… thanks to Islamists.  I think that’s their goal.  Oh yeah, and beheadings too.

-Bruce (GayPatriot)

There are few men alive more trusted today to win a war that General David Petraeus.  Not only has he thought long and hard about developing battlefield strategies to combat the rise of terrorism in the current era, but he has battlefield experience — and had it had even before the successful “surge” in Iraq, a plan that he developed and implemented.

Now, many have concerns about the timeline the president proposed for Afghanistan, having our troops out by a certain date next year, but Obama did tap Petraeus to lead our efforts in that troubled land.  And his testimony today before the Senate Armed Services Committee shows that the general wants to win this war (even if his boss won’t use the term “victory”)

Gen. David Petraeus cautiously endorsed President Barack Obama’s exit plan for the Afghan war on Tuesday, leaving himself room to recommend changes or delays as he interviewed for the job of commander of the stalemated war.

Petraeus, the emergency replacement following the sacking of the previous commander, told a Senate panel that Obama wants him to provide unvarnished military advice. Petraeus has previously said that he would recommend putting off any large-scale withdrawal if security conditions in Afghanistan can’t sustain it.

Obama has said troops will begin to leave in July 2011, but that the pace and size of the withdrawal will depend upon conditions.

Emphasis added.  That the president wants unvarnished advice from a military man like Petraeus goes well for the future of this war.  The line above about withdrawal depending upon certain conditions suggests Obama has shifted a little in its insistence on a speedy conclusion to this operation.

The choice of Petraeus suggests as much.  Indeed, some other things the general said indicated Petraeus’ focus on victory:

Petraeus also promised to “look very hard” at the rules of engagement governing troops in Afghanistan, if confirmed as the war’s next top commander. (more…)

In the aftermath of the president’s decision to oust General Stanley McChyrstal as Commander in Afghanistan and replace him with David Petraeus, he has received praise in the media — and even kudos from conservatives.

Had Obama’s predecessor similarly replaced a military commander, I dare say we would have seen a different reaction.