From Thursday’s Fox News All-Stars:

On David Petraeus as the new commander in Afghanistan:

Look, there was this remarkable success in Iraq and the fact that we have Petraeus in place is our best hope of repeating it.
But the biggest self-inflicted impediment and the biggest difference between Iraq and Afghanistan is that in Iraq we had a president [George Bush] famous — and attacked for — his stubbornness. He never spoke about exit strategy, he never spoke about a date of withdrawal. He was in the surge unconditionally, and he wanted to wait until it succeeded.
This president, Obama, announces a surge in Afghanistan and the next sentence in the speech he made on December 1, he says: And we’re going to begin our withdrawal, leaving in July 2011.
You can do all the interpretation and the subtle parsing of words [about what] Gates has said, [what] the president is saying today: we’re not going to leave … and turn the lights out on that date. We can do Kremlinological interpretation. Next week, the whole national security team will be standing on Lenin’s tomb. And we’re going to say if Petraeus is standing closer to Obama than Biden is, well, that means July 2011 is off.
All the president has to do is to say — he doesn’t even have to withdraw the 2011 date. All he has to do is to say our target is July 2011, however, it will depend on conditions on the ground. Nine words, I think it is nine words.
And that will dispel all the ambiguity. And the reason it’s important is not because it matters if we [the press] understand or predict what’s going to happen, but [because] it’s having an effect on Afghanistan today. From a president to a peasant in Afghanistan, if you have ambiguity — and we do, and you need sophisticated interpretation in order to understand if America’s going to leave or not, you are going to be really careful about siding and helping us.

On the Obama administration’s resetting of relations with Russia:

The president speaks about the new relationship and how low the relationship was when he came into office — as if George Bush had some kind of genetic aversion to Russians. The reason our relations with Russia were low is because Russia invaded Georgia — a friend of ours, an ally, a small country — and detached two of its provinces against international law, which Obama, incidentally, says he believes in.
Now, the reason relations were cold is we wanted the Russians to pay a price. Now, we weren’t going to send soldiers, but we froze our relations and denied them certain advantages.
Obama has no conception of making anybody pay a price. As you heard in that little address [yesterday with Medvedev], he said we disagree on Georgia as if it’s some incidental issue, dismisses it.
Elsewhere what does he do? He gives the Russians a victory in Eastern Europe when he cancels the missile defense system — again no price, a freebie [to Russia].
The Russians are delighted with the relationship. It’s all take, no give. And Obama thinks this is a great advance for the United States. . . .
When I heard [in the press conference, Obama use] the phrase “The Great Patriotic War,” I was stunned. The tone of this relationship if you watch the press conference — it was Obama, the United States as the supplicant, as if the Russians were the superpower.
“The Great Patriotic War” is the word that Stalin invented for the Second World War after Hitler betrayed him on the Hitler-Stalin pact, which had been an agreement between Russia — the Soviet Union — and Nazi Germany to divide Europe between them.
It’s like calling the leader of Iran the Supreme Leader or referring to [Iran] as the Islamic Republic [of Iran]. Obama does that as a way to ingratiate himself. You have to ask yourself, why?