NATO

It’s not war but a “time-limited, scope-limited military action.” The United States has been in the lead, but will be stepping back, ASAP, in favor of command (supposedly) by a squabbling coalition of the not-so-willing. The objective of the “kinetic military action”—which is going to last days, not weeks, unless it does last weeks—isn’t regime change in Libya. Our broader objective, however, is to topple Muammar Qaddafi. The commander-in-chief, meanwhile, is floating above the fray, hovering over his divided administration and his muddled policy.

And yet we’ll probably succeed.

Though he'll regretably be remembered most for his turn in Rolling Stone, we should not forget Gen. Stanley McChrystal's contributions to his country, the Army, and the conflict in Afghanistan.

At McChrystal's Fort McNair retirement ceremony Friday, Robert Gates said of the general, "Over the past decade, arguably no single American has inflicted more fear, more loss of freedom and more loss of life on our country's most vicious and violent enemies than Stan McChrystal."

Not a bad start for Britain's new prime minister, David Cameron: 

Afghanistan is the most important foreign policy and national security issue facing Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron said Thursday while on an unannounced visit to Kabul.

Lashkar Gah, Afghanistan

The Obama administration was never much bothered by the fact that a NATO ally, France, is selling offensive weapons to a NATO adversary, Russia. Never mind that Russia remains in clear violation of the French-brokered cease-fire to the 2008 war in Georgia – after all, if that doesn’t bother the French, why should it bother us? This administration has made clear that Georgia, and America’s other allies in Eastern Europe (the Czechs and the Poles in particular), will be sacrificed on the altar of ‘reset’ if necessary. Still, as the Obama administration has learned over the last year, dealing with the Russians is a tricky business – you never have a deal until you have a deal, and even then you may not have a deal.