The Petraeus Dodge

Most of today's Krauthammer article is just the sort of deceptions you'd expect from him -- attributing things that happened in regions where there was no surge to the surge, etc., etc. -- but it's noteworthy for making this line of thinking explicit:

It is understandable that Sens. Lugar, Voinovich, Domenici, Snowe and Warner may no longer trust President Bush's judgment when he tells them to wait until Petraeus reports in September. What is not understandable is the vote of no confidence they are passing on Petraeus.

After that, the column is just full of "Petraeus," "Petraeus," "Petraeus." You would have no idea that along with General Petraeus there's a CENTCOM commander, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Secretary of Defense, a President of the United States, a Vice President of the United States, etc. Apparently, now, the entire evaluation of the war is supposed to be grounded on the reputation of one upper-mid level official. It's a very strange rhetorical move. I'm not sure, for example, where the idea that Petraeus is a magician who can make the impossible work came from.

This is the same Petraeus who ran the training of Iraqi security forces from June 2004 to September 2005 and nothing came of it. I have no reason to think he did a "bad job" of organizing the training, but good training as such wasn't capable of accomplishing anything, anymore than doing a good job of commanding the 160,000 American troops in Iraq is going to accomplish anything at this point. It's not a reflection on the personal competence of any individual soldier or officer -- or even on any giant group of soldiers and officers -- to understand that some things can't be done.

Comments

Petraeus (n): scapegoat, foil, patsy, fall-guy

Posted by cleek | July 13, 2007 8:38 AM

Is there a question Petraeus would have a tough time answering with a straight face?

Posted by ProfD | July 13, 2007 8:42 AM

You would have no idea that along with General Petraeus there's a CENTCOM commander, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a Secretary of Defense, a President of the United States, a Vice President of the United States, etc.

Don't forget the war czar!

Posted by Aaron S. Veenstra | July 13, 2007 8:47 AM

Are you, sir, presuming to criticise the Duke of Wellington?

Posted by otto | July 13, 2007 8:50 AM

Rock me, O Petraeus!

Posted by Angry Sam | July 13, 2007 8:59 AM

Angry Sam, that's the exact same thing that's come to my mind every time his name comes up. It's worse than 1999, when I couldn't stop humming "Kosovo" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Kokomo."

Posted by James Gary | July 13, 2007 9:04 AM

Bush did exactly the same thing in the press conference yesterday, using Petraeus' name as a mantra. In addition to serving the same function as Krauthammer's invocation (and/but I gather that there are folks who call him Betray-us, I think because he in fact did sort of mishandle the training and then moved on with his reputation unscathed, no doubt in part because of his lofty political ambitions), I suspect part of why Bush does this is because it is quite certain that Petraeus will push to move forward with the mission no matter what come September. He would pursue his counterinsurgency strategy for the at-least ten years it would require if he were allowed to by DC.

But that said, presumably he knows as well as anyone that there is no way to sustain the surge past March 2008 - I doubt he is dumb enough to go in for the AEI notion that we'll just call in the Guard or whomever come March.

Posted by Jeff | July 13, 2007 9:29 AM

I can see that. We got there fast, and then took it slow.

Anyway, I'm pretty sure "rock me, O Petraeus" is a line in Shakespeare. If it isn't, someone needs to fix that.

Posted by Angry Sam | July 13, 2007 9:32 AM

What is not widely known is that Gen. Petraeus has superhuman abilities. If everything else fails, Petraeus (like a certain Kal-El) will fly and circle the earth really fast. That will cause a massive shift in the space time continuum, thereby turning back time (to the ‘mission accomplished’ era).

It is all documented in the rather voluminous dossiers in Cheney’s man-sized safe.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | July 13, 2007 9:35 AM

And as Josh asks, what about the War Czar? I see an bare office somewhere and plenty of golf games. Is the office in the Pentagon or the West Wing?

Well no matter and besides that General Petraeus is just so dreamy. The Heathers are just all atwitter about him.

Then there is Gates. Is he going to be able to stop the bombing of Iran. That all depends I think on Chertoff's gut feeling. Then again everything depends upon that.

The entire War Presidency was predicated upon more attacks which would win political support. Very few realize that the silence from the Dems and even nominally honest Republicans is at heart I think the fear of being 'soft' will make them dead when the next attack comes, and it is coming.

I do think there is the slightest chance that the next terror atack here will not accure to Bush's or the GOP's advantage. We will see. I'm not holding my breath. Among the range of outcomes I see is no elections at all in 08.

Posted by rapier | July 13, 2007 9:41 AM

Actually, the most interesting thing about the Krauthammer chickenshit, as well as the Bush press conference, is the dropping of the pretense that the war supporters need to speak to anyone but the small group of people who vote in Republican primaries. The Krauthammer piece concentrated solely on Republican senators, and the threat to those senators is not that their states as a whole would reject them if they displayed some actual brain function vis a vis Iraq, it is that the thuggish band of Bushies would undermine them in the primaries. Since this has been a narrowcasting administration from the beginning, this isn't so surprising, but it should be pointed out that no major American war has ever been fought so openly on behalf of a very small minority. Vietnam and even the Gulf war were defended on behalf of American interest across party and other partisan lines, for instance - but the Iraq war is defended only as a thing pleasing to the radical right. Which, who knows, might be a foretaste of governance in America. The old consensus gestures are gone, and those who make them - the Broderish clique - now simply look senile, since their rhetoric is contradicted by the very powers that be that they suck up to. The lefty critique of the power elite always began by denuding the elite of that consensus drapery. Now the elite feel no need for the drapery at all. The elements have all converged - a ridiculously over-funded military which marshals a relatively small voluntary force, a runaway executive branch, an impotent legislature, and a media that, owned and operated by the upper one percentile class, operates as a propaganda machine. There will be more pet cause wars coming.

Posted by roger | July 13, 2007 9:42 AM

"Don't forget the war czar!"

Nah, go ahead and forget him.

Posted by Njorl | July 13, 2007 10:20 AM

In this connection, the White House's "Iraq Fact Check" mentions Petraeus in 8 out of 13 rebuttals to "myths" about Iraq.

Somebody in the Oval has been reading "The Secret":

Petraeus will save us...Petraeus will save us...I believe in fairies...

Posted by the blackbird is involved | July 13, 2007 10:20 AM

In this connection, the White House's "Iraq Fact Check" mentions Petraeus in 8 out of 13 rebuttals to "myths" about Iraq.

Somebody in the Oval has been reading "The Secret":

Petraeus will save us...Petraeus will save us...I believe in fairies...

[Iraq Fact Check: http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/07/20070710-3.html]

Posted by the blackbird is involved | July 13, 2007 10:22 AM

And meanwhile, Debra Saunders says she'll be in favor of withdrawal when--yes, you guessed it--Petraeus says the war is unwinnable. Which is kind of like waiting to quit smoking until some R. J. Reynolds PR flack tells you to.

Posted by Tom Hilton | July 13, 2007 10:44 AM

The thing about Petraeus--he's not exactly lying. He says his counterinsugency tactics will work, but he needs more time--and he might be right. Only thing is, he doesn't talk much now about how much more time he needs--but if you look at his old statements and his writings, turns out, he's talking about a decade or so, at least.

Posted by rea | July 13, 2007 11:29 AM

Matt,

Why link to Krauthammer's essay when you don't even attempt to refute his main points? For example:

A year ago, it appeared that the only way to win back the Sunnis and neutralize the extremists was with great national compacts about oil and power sharing. But Anbar has unexpectedly shown that even without these constitutional settlements, the insurgency can be neutralized and al-Qaeda defeated at the local and provincial levels with a new and robust counterinsurgency strategy.

The success in Anbar isn't something Krauthammer pulled out of his ass -- he's drawing on the reporting of the NY Times's John Burns. That local success -- independent of national political deals, as Krauthammer points out -- suggests a few questions:

Why not keep some troops in Anbar to hold onto these gains?

Why not try this approach in other Sunni provinces, as the military is doing now?

More broadly, let's say this sort of success can't be replicated in Shiite or mixed areas. Wouldn't this be more of an argument for withdrawing troops from parts of Iraq where this approach is unlikely to work, and redeploying them to areas where it has worked and can work? The 'liberal' approach of essentially bailing on all of Iraq is like tossing the baby out with the bath water.

Posted by Fred | July 13, 2007 11:46 AM

At the current rate, the U.S. has spent $64,516,167 on the Iraq war since MY posted "The Petraeus Dodge" at 8:14 this morning.

Doesn't that make everyone feel better?

Posted by kafka | July 13, 2007 12:09 PM

kafka,

It will make me feel better if we can start applying cost-effectiveness measures to other government spending. How are we doing with the NCLB money designed to make blacks and Hispanics become as good academically as white and Asians? Too much money spent on that so far? Time to cut bait?

Posted by Harry | July 13, 2007 12:13 PM

I'm sure Gen. Petraeus will give a completely honest and forthright report in September especially since he has seen how the Bush administration treats generals who don't toe their line. "General Shinseki paging General Shinseki!"

Posted by Col Bat Guano | July 13, 2007 11:28 PM