Change in Command, Not Policy

Nancy Youssef, Saeed Shah and Jonathan Landay report for McClatchy on General David Petraeus taking over for Stanley McChrystal in Afghanistan.

President Barack Obama's decision to accept Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation and draft his superior, Gen. David Petraeus, to lead the war in Afghanistan eliminates a source of friction, but it doesn't address the problems plaguing U.S. policy there.

The change in command, Obama made clear Wednesday, is a change in personnel, not in a policy that's hampered by, among other things, the absence of a political strategy, rising U.S. casualties, growing ethnic tensions, endemic political corruption, the administration's July 2011 deadline for beginning a troop withdrawal and a stalled offensive in the country's second-largest city.

Andrew Sullivan summarizes reaction to the change on The Daily Dish. Most commentary is similar to McClatchy's take that Petraeus has his work cut out for him under even more difficult conditions than he faced in Iraq.

--Ballard Burgher