Jack Kelly Sunday

Not sure what to make of this week's column by Jack Kelly.

It's a confusing mush as he seems to be advocating a "strategy" that doesn't have the support of the general he describes as nothing less than "no greater expert in the U.S. military on this strategy".

But first, some fact-checking.

As always, Jack just can't help himself. In a gratuitous slap more or less completely beside his point, he spins on Health Care in a column on Afghanistan. Take a look:

If President Barack Obama supports the recommendations of Stanley McChrystal, the general he picked to run the war in Afghanistan, he'll have done a very brave thing. The president, in pushing for a health-care plan a majority of Americans really don't want, has shown he'll go against public opinion. But he's never opposed his base. If Mr. Obama supports Gen. McChrystal's request for 40,000 more troops, he'll be bucking both.

Let's check some numbers to see if he's right. In a recent CBS News/NYTimes poll, when asked the following question:

Do you mostly support or mostly oppose the changes to the health care system proposed by Barack Obama, or don't you know enough about them yet to say?

A plurality of Americans (46%) said they didn't know enough to say. 30% mostly approved and 23% mostly opposed. But, in the same poll, when asked:

Would you favor or oppose the government offering everyone a government-administered health insurance plan -- something like the Medicare coverage that people 65 and older get -- that would compete with private health insurance plans?

65% of those polled said they'd favor the government offering such a plan and less than half of that number (26%) opposed. In case you missed it, that's the "public option."

Assuming these numbers are more or less consistent across the board, where did Jack Kelly get his information (or rather "information"?)?

Do I need to ask whether his handlers at the P-G even bothered to check? You make an factual assertion in a column in a newspaper, the least that paper can do is to make sure what you're saying is factual. I guess the rules are different with Jack Kelly.

But we already knew this.

But let's look at the meat of the column:

Afghanistan is a mess not of Mr. Obama's making. We went to war in Afghanistan because the Taliban government was providing shelter to al-Qaida. After the Taliban was routed in a brilliant campaign utilizing special forces and air power, and after surviving al-Qaida largely relocated to Pakistan and Iraq, President Bush shifted the mission to nation building in a country that has never been a nation in the modern sense.

Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, a retired Army intelligence officer, illustrated the foolishness of this with an analogy: "A pack of murderous thugs holes up in a fleabag motel. The feds raid the joint, killing or busting most of them. But some of the deadly ringleaders get away. Should the G-men pursue the kingpins, or hang around to renovate the motel?"

Jack obfuscates just a teensy bit here. While he does point out that "Afghanistan is a mess not of Mr. Obama's making" he doesn't point out nearly clearly enough who's mess it obviously is: George W Bush. Jack obfuscates by implying that the "mess" happened because Bush shifted into "nation building" rather than finishing off al-Qaeda.

Then there's Bush's War in Iraq - which Jack doesn't mention at all. Surely the troops and material used in that illegal war could have better served the cause in Afghanistan than in Iraq.

But let's tweak Lt Col Peters' analogy. To be more accurate, Peters should have described "the Feds" as letting the head "thug" go while busting into the higher priced "flea bag" hotel down the road. This newer hotel, they'd have to say, was run by a bigger thug. They'd say that they had to break the door down on this thug because they knew he had a huge cache of weapons and had a truly definite plan to kill our children in their sleep (even though they had no evidence that any of that was true). Meanwhile that first "fleabag hotel" was ignored.

That's the correct analogy.

The rest of the piece is confusing. Kelly wants a smaller force to counter the insurgents in Afghanistan but General McCrystal (who as an expert on these matters there is "no greater") doesn't support it. Additionally, withdrawing troops from Afghanistan would send the wrong message:

To withdraw a large number of troops from Afghanistan would be perceived as a defeat, and the perception of defeat can have consequences as ugly as defeat itself.

Huh? So it's a good idea or a bad one? I can't see what Jack is saying.

It's as if he had so many column inches to fill, had nothing really to say and decided to just go all Billy Flynn on us.