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Commentators discuss President Obama's sacking of the top US commander in Afghanistan following the publication of a Rolling Stone article in which Gen McChrystal and his inner circle made disparaging remarks about administration officials and the appointment of Gen Petraeus.

[subscription required] how Gen McChrystal made such an obvious mistake:

"Gen McChrystal's background is almost exclusively in Special Forces, a cadre that naturally (and not entirely unfairly) looks down on others, even within the military, as lesser beings. Theirs is also a world that necessarily does not often interact with the media. Yet Rolling Stone's editor confirmed on Wednesday that all those quoted by their reporter, who was embedded with the general, were clear when they were on and off the record.
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"There is little excuse for such a prolonged lapse of judgment in front of a journalist. Indeed embedded reporters often complained to me while I was in the army that we did too much to encourage soldiers not to let down their guard with journalists. This is exactly why a team as elite and professional as Gen McChrystal's should have known better."

if Gen McChrystal's replacement is over-hyped:

"The appointment of Gen. Petraeus is likely to squelch any such discussion before it gets started. The near superhero status Petraeus enjoys isn't simply due to his intelligence or capability as a leader - it's also the result of media mythmaking about the Iraq War. Despite the ease with which the country has come to adopt the narrative that the 2007 troop escalation and the shift to a counterinsurgency strategy singlehandedly turned the Iraq War around, it remains untrue... there were a number of factors involved, including ethnic cleansing in Baghdad, the Sunni tribes turning on al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq and the Sadr ceasefire."

this could be the second time Gen Petraeus has bailed out a president, referring to his time in Iraq:

"Afghanistan 2010 may be an even tougher nut than Iraq 2007. Sure, Iraq looked like a mess back then, but the Americans hadn't tried a lot of good ideas. In Afghanistan they have been trying them out and not finding them working very well. Counterinsurgency was a novel idea in Baghdad back then. It is not anything new in Kabul right now. Our biggest problem in Afghanistan is the government we are supporting there, and it isn't clear to me what Petraeus can do about that."

that the tension between US politics and military is to do with more than just President Obama's inexperience and unease at the Afghanistan war:

"But perhaps the main reason why Obama's problem with the generals is bigger than McChrystal is the continuing impact of the post-9/11 legacy. George Bush defined the US as a nation perpetually at war. The Pentagon produced a theory to suit: the Long War doctrine postulating unending conflict against ill-defined but ubiquitous enemies. Unquestioning patriotism became an official ideology to which all were expected to subscribe."

setting a deadline to exit Afghanistan is the root of the tension between President Obama and Gen McChrystal:

"In explaining the mess, we had better start with President Obama. He inherited the war from George Bush. He has always been sceptical about whether it is winnable, and anguished for three months last year - to McChrystal's now acknowledged fury - about whether to authorise reinforcements.
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"In the end, he agreed to send more men, because he feared the wrath of the American Right if he was seen to be the U.S. leader who 'lost Afghanistan'.
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"But he imposed a tight timeframe, saying that U. S. troops would start to pull out in July 2011. According to the soldiers, this was a huge mistake. It never looked likely that McChrystal's forces could grip the country so quickly."

The story has prompted former US secretary of state about army strategy in Afghanistan. He says the deadlines for exit are unrealistic:

"Afghanistan has never been pacified by foreign forces. At the same time, the difficulty of its territory combined with the fierce sense of autonomy of its population have historically thwarted efforts to achieve a transparent central government.
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"The argument that a deadline is necessary to oblige President Hamid Karzai to create a modern central government challenges experience. What weakens transparent central governance is not so much Karzai's intentions, ambiguous as they may be, but the structure of his society, run for centuries on the basis of personal relationships. Demands by an ally publicly weighing imminent withdrawal to overthrow established patterns in a matter of months may prove beyond any leader's capacities."

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