Reading Assignment: The Wrong Man

This three-year-old article from Esquire has new relevance since Obama's picked a new General to run the war in Afganistan.

More than one person has pointed out that Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal's hands are not clean when it comes to torture, and the suspicion by some is that Obama reversed position on releasing the photos of torture camps precisely for that reason.

It's merely a passing reference in this article, but if McChrystal had any role whatsoever in what the article details, Obama made a seriously bad decision.

Read the whole thing: Acts of Conscience

[h/t Booman]

UPDATE: Links on McChrystal—Sullivan,

Reading Assignment

I remember reading Charles P Pierce's Obama article in Esquire when it first came out—but, it was probably hurriedly, while in the library or something, and I didn't really absorb it.

So, I was doing some design research the other day in the library in Charleston, and I photocopied the article along with lots of other stuff from an array of well-designed magazines. I intended to re-read the piece, so I copied the whole thing...

I read it on the flight back to Michigan today, and I was positively blown away. No, not because I'm an Obama guy. After all, the piece does not extol Obama, nor is it really even about him. It is about us as a country. And it is fucking phenomenal.

Pierce is a great writer—always has been. Sports, politics, humor, whatever. He's one of the best. But this article isn't just the best political article I've read lately, it's probably the best writing I've read in years, period.

I don't know how I missed it the first time. Probably because my Obamania at the time was temporarily suppressing my cynicism...

The piece is simultaneously exhilarating and disillusioning in its brutally honest assessment of the state of politics in America.

The Cynic and Senator Obama.

Too good to excerpt. Read the whole thing.