An e-mailer (needless to say, he’s right that ultimately the implementation is what matters):

Mr. Lowry,
This was not a home run for Obama.
Your editors were right: he should have refused the resignation letter, given him a good tongue lashing, and sent him on his way. I’ve read the article and trust me, as a military officer, nothing that McChrystal said constitutes insubordination. If there were other reasons for the dismissal, such as what were clearly policy and strategy differences, Obama should have said so. He didn’t. He chose to let the media frame it as McChrystal stepping over the line. This is how the foaming-at-the-mouth commentators on MSNBC will characterize it, and they will hail Obama’s command presence.
You say he sounded “quite stalwart.” Sure. He sounds “quite concerned”about the oil spill too, and we see how that is going.
My biggest source of unhappiness is that this is a demotion for Petraeus.He needs to worry about grand strategy, not combatant strategy. Do not misunderstand, as you seem to do toward the end of your post: this is not “another war” Petraeus will be “managing.” This is a separate front in the SAME war. Do you honestly think Petraeus’s popularity in some civilian circles (certainly not the administration and Democrats in general–remember, this is the same national party which took out the “General Betray Us” ad) will save him from the chopping block when the time comes for him as well?
One of my mentors, a very esteemed Military History professor, once remarked to me that he thought it was very dangerous that Petraeus seemed to have accepted political consequences if the Surge in Iraq failed. If it had failed, Petraeus wouldn’t have had to worry, because Bush would have gone to bat for him–that is the type of guy Bush is. Obama is not that type of guy. If we don’t see immediate positive results in Afghanistan — and we won’t — don’t be surprised when surrogates and “leakers” start to whisper about unhappiness with Petraeus, the same way they’ve been doing with McChrystal since shortly after he took over AfPak.