
At The Nation, Robert Dreyfuss writes Panetta, Petraeus, Allen: Bad News, Good News:
There’s good news and bad news in the decision to shift Leon Panetta from CIA to Defense and replace him with General David Petraeus. Let’s start with the bad news first.
Most disappointing are the signals from the White House that the changes represent merely personnel shifts and don’t represent policy changes. Maybe it’s too much to expect President Obama, already preparing for his 2012 re-election bid, to admit that he has to oversee a drastic retooling of his foreign policy, and that putting new people in new positions is a way to start the ball rolling. Certainly, given the upheaval shaking the region from Morocco to Afghanistan and the free-fall decline of American power and influence throughout that part of the world, you’d think that Obama might want to rethink the direction of US policy. But in preparing the world for the appointments of Panetta and Petraeus, the White House is insisting on continuity, not change. Vis-à-vis Afghanistan, in particular, that’s a bad mistake, since Obama seems intent so far on walking a middle course between supporters of a withdrawal from Afghanistan and the stay-the-course hawks who insist that the Taliban and its allies can be defeated militarily. The result of that cautious, typically Obama-led approach is likely to be a gradual pullout of about 30,000 troops over the next eighteen months, a slow, grinding drawdown through the end of 2014, and an intensive effort to maintain US forces there in smaller numbers for years to come.
Other bad news: putting Petraeus at CIA puts an exclamation point on a twenty-year trend at the intelligence agency to shift its focus from intelligence-gathering to military action and covert operations. ...
Finally, on the (possibly) good news front: Panetta, during his years in Congress, was a budget hawk. If ever there was a time when the Pentagon needs a budget hawk in charge, it’s now. ...
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2010:
Official travel warnings normally run along the lines of don't go sailing off of Somalia or don't pack your bikini for that trip to Saudi Arabia ... now we have this:
The Mexican government warned its citizens Tuesday to use extreme caution if visiting Arizona because of a tough new law that requires all immigrants and visitors to carry U.S.-issued documents or risk arrest.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that this is the first time a foreign government has warned its citizens against visiting a state in our country.