Interesting - somewhat, anyways - report in Politico concerning lack of CEO types in Obama White House - this dovetails nicely with story that in drafting their stimulus and bank rescue and mortgage relief plans they seemed to make it a matter of policy not to include actual business people in the discussions - which dovetails nicely with fact that all three of those initiatives have been greeted by steep declines and growing protestations of opposition on Wall Street - which dovetails nicely with my oft stated warning that if Obama tries to govern like an intellectual, especially an intellectual with pronounced liberal biases, if he tries to replicate as president the intellectual environment he knew and no doubt savoured as an academic, then we could be in a world of shit here. Certainly there's a world of shit feel to things at the moment.
But does his decision to send a division size 'surge' of troops to Afghanistan counter this sense of a left wing intellectual miasma hanging over ye body politik? Dunno - seems to be some impression out there that this commitment ad hoc in nature - there were reports about exteme rethink going on viz Afghanistan but surge comes without any real declaration of such. Times does report this morning that UAV attacks in Pakistani tribal regions are up this month, which could signal either a more aggressive military posture against Islamists or conversely an attempt to force Pakistan into a more aggressive military posture viz same. Certainly, increased UAV hits are gonna put civilian gov't in Islamabad, which so far has shown itself to be quite spineless, in a delicate position and will most definitely rile up the baddies - so to do such without having some kind of strategy in mind would be a tad dangerous.
Still, I do worry that it's simply a case of Obama realising that having committed to a more aggressive Afghan policy during the election he cannot now back down from it without signaling a potentially ruinous weakness to the evil doers. [and now word comes out that The Big O plans on mitigating burgeoning budget deficits by, among other things, cutting back in military expenditures, re Iraq and Afghanistan - so more confusion the way I read it]
