"...first child for mother, hospital..."

I love this story: Afghan woman bears child at Coalition hospital: first child for mother, hospital

Air Force Capt. Jennifer Buckingham, a Coalition physician assistant in northern Kandahar Province's Khakrez District, tried to deliver an Afghan woman's baby for eight hours before it was determined the woman needed to be medically evacuated.

Buckingham, with the Female Treatment Team of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force - Afghanistan, did not have the surgical capabilities at her location to do an emergency cesarean-section procedure: a procedure that had to happen in order to save woman and child.

So doctors at Kandahar Airfield, roughly 50 miles away, determined the best course of action was to fly the mother, along with her husband and mother-in-law, to the Coalition-forces-run Kandahar Airfield Role III Hospital.

Forty-five minutes after landing on the night of Jan. 20, 2011, a healthy 5-pound, 12-ounce baby boy was born to the delight of mother and Coalition medical practitioners alike.

There's more...

"Better to keep your mouth closed and be thought a fool..."

"...than to open it and remove all doubt."

There are many different ways to lose a job. And there are many phrases that end up being synonymous with "I quit." As Gen. Stanley McChrystal demonstrates.

In the eight-page article, released to reporters on Monday ahead of publication, McChrystal appears to belittle Vice President Joe Biden and accuses Karl Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador to Kabul, of undermining his war plan within the administration.

Asked by the Rolling Stone reporter about what he now feels of the war strategy advocated by Biden last fall – fewer troops, more drone attacks – the article reports that McChrystal and his aides attempted to come up with a good one-liner to dismiss the question. “Are you asking about Vice President Biden?” McChrystal reportedly jokes. “Who’s that?”

Later in the article, McChrystal turns more serious when asked about cables sent last fall to Washington by Eikenberry. The cables called into question the major troop increase advocated by McChrystal’s team and the U.S.’s backing of Afghan President Hamid Karzai – views that the ambassador had not previously raised with McChrystal or his staff.

“I like Karl, I’ve known him for years, but they’d never said anything like that to us before,” McChrystal is quoted as saying. “Here’s one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, ‘I told you so.’”

I am not at all up on the ins and outs of what we're currently doing in Afghanistan, and have no opinion about McChrystal as a strategist, tactician, leader, general or anything else. I am up on Joe Biden, and you'd have to search far and wide to find someone who is more contemptuous of him than I am. And I've got no difficulty with McChrystal's description of Eikenberry's cables. Politicians play political games, setting themselves up to benefit whatever happens whenever possible, and covering their flanks as best they can always. So I assume that McChrystal is 100% accurate with all of these comments.

That said, he cannot make those comments and remain in that position. It is completely unacceptable for a general to allow himself to be quoted demonstrating that level of contempt for the civilian leadership that out-ranks him on the chain of command. The contempt may be appropriate, the comments may even be mild, and shared by every member of the service in Afghanistan - the general cannot be quoted as making them. He has to go.

An excellent question

From former Senator Rick Santorum:

Can anyone give an historical example of a war that was won after one of the warring parties announced when it was going to stop fighting?

I'm guessing the answer is "no."

Our Post-American President

An e-mailer to The Corner, on Obama's speech last night:

...there was his point about the Nation he wanted to build most was ours. Did that creep anybody else out but me? Look, you were elected President, not the rebuilder of the Nation.

This e-mailer may not have been paying attention during the campaign, but that's actually one of the things that he was explicit about:

this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation...

That has been the primary concern about Barack Obama for many from the beginning. He is a "post-American" - he has no love, admiration or affection for the institutions that have made this country great. He believes that America, rather than the greatest force for good in the world, is a source of problems. He believes that the country needs to be "remade" and "rebuilt."