Would this administration rather fight al-Qaida, or join them?

President Obama last week made another change of command in the Afghan War, an historically bizarre enterprise that continues to sap American military morale and manpower, yet for which Mr. Obama has already announced his surrender-and-withdrawal date (July, 2011.)

Mr. Obama relieved Gen. Stanley McChrystal due to a profile of the general appearing in the latest Rolling Stone magazine. It’s hard to point to a specific direct statement by the general in that article that triggered the move, but the report captured an unmistakable tone of disrespect for his civilian superiors at the general’s headquarters — a belief that Mr. Obama, Vice President Biden, and the president’s ambassadors to the region are a bunch of posturing clowns more interested in appearances than in results.

As commander-in-chief of the military, Mr. Obama — who Wednesday named popular General David Petraeus to take over the command — had every right to make the change. It could even be seen as politically necessary. Especially to the extent the charges may be true.

Mr. Obama spent an absurdly long time last year deciding to give General McChrystal 30,000 additional troops for the Afghan campaign — half of the 60,000 he requested. (In fact, the roots of their split almost certainly lie in that long period of apparent indecision, and especially the “half measure” finally decided upon, which some have compared to giving a bomber pilot enough fuel to fly half a round-trip mission.)

Mr. Obama, with his total lack of military or foreign policy experience, could hardly afford to be seen as weak or vacillating, again.

One does have to wonder, however, what he — and the competent General Petraeus — hope to accomplish in the remaining year of this adventure.

To impose a modern, centralized, republican government on Afghanistan, featuring the rule of law with an honest and competent domestic police force?

Invaders have been trying that — and failing — for thousands of years. This is a mountainous land of quasi-independent tribal chieftains with no tradition of representative government, nor of separation of religion and state, nor any other politically correct modernity.

President Hamid Karzai is a corrupt and ineffectual tin-pot potentate whose influence extends less than a stone’s throw outside the capital, making such previous American “strongman” choices as Chiang Kai-shek, Fulgencio Batista, and Nguyen Cao Ky look positively Churchillian.

Clearly, America’s limited war aims would have been better served had our first approach been to the tribal chiefs who control the opium trade in this God-forsaken attic of the world, offering to pay them a better price for their cash crop and put American ingenuity to work improving the legitimate distribution of God’s greatest pain-relieving gift to mankind, asking as our price for this service nothing but the heads of Osama bin Laden and his chief henchmen.

Mr. Obama ran for office on a promise of “change.” Yet what “change” for the better we have seen in Afghanistan — or can expect in the next year — is hard to pinpoint.

Will General Petraeus’ soldiers, at the very least, now be freed from the concern that — having been sent there to conduct a war against an irregular, plainclothes enemy — they will still be brought up on charges of murder should they actually (gasp) shoot one of the thugs who spend their time planting roadside bombs and taking pot shots at our guys?

Probably not. Every G.I. will still be trailed by an eager JAG lawyer, anxious to charge the brute with violation of some “civilian’s” civil rights. In the era of Obama, war is surely a new kind of hell.

Mr. Obama is at pains to APPEAR decisive, but there’s little evidence he really views the Taliban extremists or even al-Qaida as his visceral enemy. In fact, the suspicion persist that their goal — to “cut America down to size,” making us a smaller, weaker, poorer, less proud and less exceptional nation — lines up pretty well with those of a president who still insists on exacerbating the Great Recession, rushing us toward bankruptcy with vastly expensive socialist schemes designed to “punish the rich.”

12 million illegal immigrants stealing American jobs? Yawn.

Iran threatens Israel with nuclear bombs? Ho-hum.

An Islamic Army officer shouts “Allah is great!” and opens fire, killing dozens of his own men at Fort Hood, Texas? Don’t call it “Islamic terrorism,” for heaven’s sake — no sense upsetting anyone down at the madrassa.

Economy in the tank thanks to excessive taxes, spending, and federal mandates? Mr. Obama’s own administration issued BP a permit to drill the Deepwater Horizon without any written plan to deal with a blowout? Oh, well — maybe that’ll help us pass “cap-and-trade.” Meantime, summer’s here: shall we stage a rock concert, or go play some golf?

As others have already noted, Mr. Obama found many more opportunities during his first year in office to meet with Andy Stern, head of the radical SEIU, than with General McChrystal — the man he placed in charge of a real shooting war. General McChrystal was “out of sight, out of mind” until Rolling Stone paid him its fatal visit.

Will General Petraeus now get at least a few days of Mr. Obama’s undivided attention, as they work to figure out how to win a war that’s costing scores of American lives every month?

Or is it vacation time at the White House?

Surf’s up!

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