Petraeus' report was everything we were told it would be
Monday, September 10, 2007 at 4:36PM Having been leaked out slowly in the days leading up, there were no surprises.
Petraeus makes his case for tactical progress, and surge critics argue the disconnect with strategic goals (the government in Iraq is not jelling and the slo-mo partitioning proceeds--albeit with fewer deaths).
Making the case for the status quo on troops until next spring, promising a drop down to pre-surge levels only a year from now, is going to be a very hard sell to make.
Most of the rejection will come from a public that sees a return to war-plus levels of casualties, but with little sense of payoff or positive movement. Like the addict who consumes the drug with no hope of a high but merely the absence of an unbearable low, we seem to be running faster just to stay in place.
Still, since the public trusts the military far more than either Congress or the White House regarding a fitting glidepath toward lower troop levels, Petraeus may just have sold enough well enough to buy some significant leeway on his request.
But if so, I will also tell you this: the public won't stand for a serious ramping up toward a major military intervention into Iran on the side.
If Petraeus wins most of what he wants (say, he gives up some token reductions before the end of the year but most of the surge is preserved through next spring, as we engage in all the troop rotational lengthening schemes we can muster), then we'll be definitely locked into a long, slow drawdown starting next spring that will effectively rule out any other major intervention by Bush save for the pointless lobbing of missiles and bombs from above.
If so, and the latest intell estimates are correct in saying that Iran's within a couple years of achieving its bomb, then this is a done deal that's been left to the next president, most likely along with Kim.
See what happens when you telegraph your punches with that "axis of evil" bit?
You end up only landing one.
Reader Comments (7)
What surprised me about the Petraeus testimony was how literate he was. However, I was intrigued by a couple of points. 1) His strategy of garrisoning Baghdad with lots of outposts seems an appropriate strategy provided the soldiers are there to help communicate and develop, not just shoot. 2) His insistence that all of his testimony had not been screened by the Bush administration which I find suspect.
We'll see. but I found myself somewhat encouraged by the Petraeus testimony even though I think that any significant drawdown will not in fact be substantial or lasting.
Why were you surprised that Petraeus was literate??
We gotta trust Petraeus when he said (and wrote) that his testimony had not been vetted by the Administration. If we can't trust the generals and their soldiers, then there's no-one left to trust. As Tom said, both Congress and the Administration went MIA on strategy. At least someone with his boots on the ground there has a clue, is playing the hand he was dealt, and is taking responsibility for his decisions.
Not quite sure. In retrospect it was principally his almost academic treatment of the situation, the report and his delivery. The experience was much more like a dissertation than your standard military briefing from a general.
Anything more than an air attack on Iran is already ruled out by the strong public resistance to the existing war/occupation. The air attack may have already been ruled out as part of the "impeachment is not on the table" deal that Pelosi announced on taking office. There will be more nuclear powers in the world, period. The opportunity to prevent that is long lost. Among other problems, the treaties all called for proliferation to stop, but also for ALL NUCLEAR ARMED NATIONS TO DISARM. The latter never happened, so the treaties are long-broken propaganda nonsense waved around whenever convenient by the big players in the game to keep smaller players out. And an air attack won't destroy a nuclear research program nor even set it back much - Iranians are not fools and are quite computer-literate. Their research program is widely distributed, and probably quite easy to restart with everyone working from home doing telework. The only thing that an air attack might do is slow down refinement of nuclear materials. But with natural-uranium reactors like CANDU dumping out plutonium in their "waste" stream (why India and Pakistan bought them), again it's only a matter of time before Iran gets the materials. This can only end, as with Kim in NK, by negotiations. The Democrats know it. It's time for the real endgame.
The neo-con fantasy of, as Wesley Clark revealed, invading at least seven countries (not including Afghanistan), is over. If that air attack comes, expect at least a few (possibly renegade) Democrats to move to impeach Cheney. The articles of impeachment would be devastating and quite likely include facts only available to Congress at present. What are they going to do, charge Democrat Congressmen with treason? It would be a mess.
Longer term, the conflict is between the House of Saud and the many fractured and disunited and oppressed Shia who actually sit on the oil all around the Persian Gulf. The most united Shia are in Iran, but they're ethnically and linguistically distinct, and not likely to lead Shia Arabs in any revolt. However, it's possible, so Kuwait remains important to the US.
Interestingly, Israel has also recognized that it's the Shia not Sunni forces that represent the major threat to its position: Hizbullah, Iran, and the growing links these have to Hamas. Thus the overtures to Fatah and Saudi Arabia, and thus the massive military aid packages to the House of Saud and Government of Israel. It's a not-so-veiled threat to Iran and Shia potential insurgents in the Gulf States and eastern Saudi Arabia. Hmm.
Maybe when the oil runs out, the US and its allies will pull out, and leave Arab Shia revolutionaries to take out their revenge on the Sunni ruling classes in a Rwanda-type genocide. Or, maybe, before the oil runs out.
Giuliani's a clown. The actual survivors of 9/11, the fire and police and muncipal workers whose benefits investments are managed by the Comptroller of New York City, put forth their own solution on May 10 as a Google shareholder's resolution (opposed by google management!). In that resolution, Google would have been forbidden to cooperate with any foreign government suppressing political comment or factual exposes, and could not even have hosted content in any country with laws preventing political expression of any kind. The rules would even have prevented Google from hosting in Canada, which has primitive libel laws often exploited by the worst people in society to hide their crimes and silence their critics, and which do not exempt political comment even from criminal libel charges (though it rarely happens). The resolution cited the UN Declaration of Universal Human Rights as its basis for asserting Google had to uphold freedom of political expression.
Pardon me for agreeing with the veterans of 9/11 that the solution is the open debate of all the above and steady democratization of every Arab state, and NOT more invasions that put another crony clique in charge.