Having It Both Ways

Well, he did it. President Obama relieved General McChrystal of his command in Afghanistan and replaced him with, you guessed it, General David Petraeus. You can't make this stuff up.

This is the same General Petraeus whose intelligence, if not his integrity (that was left for Senator Hillary Clinton and others), was directly challenged by none other than then Senator Barack Obama. The occasion was the September 2007 Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing at which Democrats were organized to posture and relentlessly question in such a manner as to discredit any report from either General Petraeus or Ambassador Ryan Crocker that the "surge" in Iraq was in fact working.

The whole tawdry episode was accompanied, you'll recall, by a full-page ad taken in The New York Times by MoveOn.org featuring a picture of the general with the label, "General Petraeus or General Betray Us?" Texas GOP Senator John Cornyn sponsored a resolution condemning the ad, as well as MoveOn.org and it passed 72-25. Senator Clinton was among those voting against the resolution. Senators Biden and Obama did not vote. While Biden was conveniently out of town, Obama was on hand but refrained from voting. Rather, he dismissed the resolution as a "stunt", stating that, "By not casting a vote, I registered my protest against these empty politics."

Oh to be a liberal Democrat for just one day. Free from any obligation to admit you were wrong or say you are sorry, feeling no shame, untroubled by hypocrisy, without any sense of irony.

Then again, I never want to be a liberal Democrat.