An interesting discussion on MSNBC right now.

General McChrystal has resigned his position as commander in Afghanistan, and has been replaced by General Petraeus.

Since Petraeus is possibly our best General in a generation or two, the question is should we give him a fifth star?

I say no. He's obviously in line for Army Chief of Staff or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, but the assignment doesn't require a General of the Army. What needs to happen is the White House needs to make something big happen in Afghanistan on any front - military, social, or economic.

To all my friends in Ontario.

Welcome to our world! The quake that just rocked Toronto would barely move us off the couch.

Damn, been too long since I felt a good quake.

A military note.

I'm following a lot of discussion threads about the resignation of General McChrystal. One of the common complaints is that this somehow violates Gen. McChrystal's freedom of speech.

The military operates under a special set of laws called the Uniform Code of Military Justice. These laws are just like any regular law, passed by Congress as a package and signed by the President, but apply only to members of the US military and to military installations. The relevant code here is Article 88:

“Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Transportation, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Territory, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.”

There is a separate Article covering enlisted troops.

We live on discipline in the services. We require it. An army depends on mutual lines of respect up and down the chain of command, and that includes the civilian power structure. Especially the President in his role as Commander-in-Chief. We are also trained to be polite to officials, no matter what we think about them. That training served me well when Vice-President Bush shook my hand in Hawaii.

That Gen. McChrystal and his immediate staff were so contemptuous over multiple encounters with a reporter shows that McChrystal had fostered a climate of disrespect for the National Command Authority. That is unforgivable.