#Betrayus : Sycophant Savior - The American Conservative
Amanda Williams
Sycophant Savior
General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington—if not in Baghdad.
by Andrew J. Bacevich
In common parlance, the phrase “political general” is an epithet, the
inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big
issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court
disaster—so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest
levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At
the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A
general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the
former.
George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all
“political generals” in the very best sense of the term. Their claims to
immortality rest not on their battlefield exploits—Washington actually
won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through brute force
rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field commander at
all—but on the skill they demonstrated in translating military power into
political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great soldiers
possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war’s political dimension.
David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting his recent
assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the “way forward,” Petraeus
demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst kind—one who
indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and
butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative,
namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political
purposes.
From the very beginning of the Iraq War, such harmony has been absent.
The war’s military and political aspects have been badly out of synch.
(In this regard, the hackneyed comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are
tragically apt.) The failure to plan for an occupation, the wildly
inflated expectations of Iraq’s rapid transformation into a liberal
democracy, Donald Rumsfeld’s stubborn refusal to acknowledge the
insurgency’s existence until long after it had begun, the deeply flawed
kick-down-the-door campaign that ensued once Rumsfeld could no longer
deny reality: all of these meant that from the outset, the exertions of
U.S. troops, however great, tended to be at odds with our stated
political intentions. Our actions were counterproductive.
The Petraeus-Crocker hearings found Petraeus in a position to resolve
that problem. Over the previous eight months, a discredited president had
effectively abdicated responsibility for managing the war. “I trust David
Petraeus” became George W. Bush’s mantra, suggesting an astonishing level
of presidential deference. Sometime in early 2007, the task of
formulating basic strategy for Iraq had effectively migrated from
Washington to Baghdad, passing from the office of the commander in chief
to the headquarters of the senior field commander. The president made it
clear that he intended to takes his cues from his general. Military
judgment would inform, even determine, political decisions.
The general has now made his call, and President Bush has endorsed it:
the surge having succeeded (so at least we are assured), it will now be
curtailed. The war will continue, albeit on a marginally smaller scale.
As events develop, it just might become smaller still. Only time will
tell.
Petraeus has chosen a middle course, carefully crafted to cause the least
amount of consternation among various Washington constituencies he is
eager to accommodate. This is the politics of give and take, of horse
trading, of putting lipstick on a pig. Ultimately, it is the politics of
avoidance.
A political general in the mold of Washington or Grant would have taken a
different course, using his moment in the spotlight not to minimize
consternation but to stir it up to the maximum extent. He would have
capitalized on his status as man of the hour to oblige civilian leaders,
both in Congress and in the executive branch, to do what they have not
done since the Iraq War began—namely, their jobs. He would have insisted
upon the president and the Congress making decisions that wartime summons
them—and not military commanders—to make. Instead, Petraeus issued
everyone a pass.
* * *
In testifying before House and Senate committees about the current
situation in Iraq, Petraeus told no outright lies. He made no blustery
promises about “victory,” a word notably absent from his testimony. The
tone of the presentation was sober and measured. It contained the
requisite references to complexity and challenge. Petraeus acknowledged
miscalculation and disappointment. In contrast to his commander in chief,
he did not claim that U.S. troops were “kicking ass.”
Yet the essence of his message was this: after four years of futile
blundering, the United States has identified the makings of a successful
strategy in Iraq. The new doctrine that Petraeus had devised and
implemented—the concept of securing the population and thereby fostering
conditions conducive to reconstruction and reconciliation—has produced
limited but real progress. This gives Petraeus cause for hope that
further efforts along these lines may yet enable the United States to
create an Iraq that is stable, unified, and not a haven for terrorists.
In so many words, Petraeus told Congress that senior U.S. commanders in
Iraq had finally found the right roadmap. The way ahead may be long and
difficult—indeed, it will be. But Petraeus and his key subordinates know
where they are. They know where they need to go. And above all, at long
last, they know how to get there.
Critics have questioned the data that Petraeus offered to substantiate
his case. They charge him with relying on dubious statistics, with
ignoring facts that he finds inconvenient, and with discovering trends
where none exist. They question whether to credit the much-touted
progress in Anbar province to American shrewdness or to the vagaries of
Iraqi sectarian and tribal politics. They cite the pathetic performance
of the corrupt and dysfunctional Iraqi government. They note the
disparity between the Petraeus assessment and those offered by the
intelligence community, by the Government Accountability Office, and by
congressionally appointed blue-ribbon commissions. They point out that
other highly qualified and well-informed senior military
officers—notably, Gen. George Casey, the army chief of staff, and Adm.
William Fallon, commander of United States Central Command—have publicly
expressed views notably at odds with those of General Petraeus.
The critics make a good case. Yet let us ignore them. Let us assume
instead that Petraeus genuinely believes that he has broken the code in
Iraq and that things are improving. Let’s assume further that he is
correct in that assessment.
What then should he have recommended to the Congress and the president?
That is, if the commitment of a modest increment of additional forces
—the 30,000 troops comprising the surge, now employed in accordance with
sound counterinsurgency doctrine —has begun to turn things around, then
what should the senior field commander be asking for next?
A single word suffices to answer that question: more. More time. More
money. And above all, more troops.
It is one of the oldest principles of generalship: when you find an
opportunity, exploit it. Where you gain success, reinforce it. When you
have your opponent at a disadvantage, pile on. In a letter to the
soldiers serving under his command, released just prior to the
congressional hearings, Petraeus asserted that coalition forces had
“achieved tactical momentum and wrestled the initiative from our
enemies.” Does that reflect his actual view of the situation? If so, then
surely the imperative of the moment is to redouble the current level of
effort so as to preserve that initiative and to deny the enemy the
slightest chance to adjust, adapt, or reconstitute.
Yet Petraeus has chosen to do just the opposite. Based on two or three
months of (ostensibly) positive indicators, he has advised the president
to ease the pressure, withdrawing the increment of troops that had
(purportedly) enabled the coalition to seize the initiative in the first
place.
This defies logic. It’s as if two weeks into the Wilderness Campaign,
Grant had counseled Lincoln to reduce the size of the Army of the
Potomac. Or as if once Allied forces had established the beachhead at
Normandy, Eisenhower had started rotating divisions back stateside to
ease the strain on the U.S. Army.
Petraeus likes to portray himself as a thinking soldier. Having devoted
his Ph.D. dissertation to the lessons of Vietnam, he qualifies as a
serious student of counterinsurgencies. He knows that they require lots
of troops—many more than the United States has in Iraq relative to the
size of the population there. He knows, too, that they require lots of
time—on average, nine or ten years by his own publicly expressed
estimation. The counter-insurgency manual that Petraeus helped draft
prior to taking up command in Baghdad makes these points explicitly.
If Petraeus actually believes that he can salvage something akin to
success in Iraq and if he agrees with President Bush about the
consequences of failure —genocidal violence, Iraq becoming a launching
pad for terrorist attacks directed against the United States, the Middle
East descending into chaos that consumes Israel, the oil-dependent global
economy shattered beyond repair, all of this culminating in the emergence
of a new Caliphate bent on destroying the West—then surely this moment of
(supposed) promise is not a time for scrimping. Rather, now is the time
to go all out—to insist upon a maximum effort.
* * *
There is only one plausible explanation for Petraeus’s terminating a
surge that has (he says) enabled coalition forces, however tentatively,
to gain the upper hand. That explanation is politics—of the wrong kind.
Given the current situation as Petraeus describes it, an incremental
reduction in U.S. troop strength makes sense only in one regard: it
serves to placate each of the various Washington constituencies that
Petraeus has a political interest in pleasing.
A modest drawdown responds to the concerns of Petraeus’s fellow four
stars, especially the Joint Chiefs, who view the stress being imposed on
U.S. forces as intolerable. Ending the surge provides the Army and the
Marine Corps with a modicum of relief.
A modest drawdown also comes as welcome news for moderate Republicans in
Congress. Nervously eyeing the forthcoming elections, they have wanted to
go before the electorate with something to offer other than being
identified with Bush’s disastrous war. Now they can point to signs of
change—indeed, Petraeus’s proposed withdrawal of one brigade before
Christmas coincides precisely with a suggestion made just weeks ago by
Sen. John Warner, the influential Republican from Virginia.
Although they won’t say so openly, a modest drawdown comes as good news
to Democrats as well. Accused with considerable justification of having
done nothing to end the war since taking control of the Congress in
January, they can now point to the drawdown as evidence that they are
making headway. As Newsweek’s Michael Hirsch observed, Petraeus
“delivered an early Christmas present” to congressional Democrats.
Above all, a modest drawdown pleases President Bush. It gives him
breathing room to continue the conflict in which he has so much invested.
It all but guarantees that Iraq will be the principal gift that Bush
bestows upon his successor when he leaves office in January 2009. Bush’s
war will outlive Bush: for reasons difficult to fathom, this has become
an important goal for the president and his dwindling band of loyalists.
Granted, no one is completely happy. Yet neither does anyone go away
empty-handed. The Petraeus plan offers a little something for everyone,
not least of all for Petraeus himself, who takes back to Baghdad a
smidgen of additional time (his next report is not due for another six
months), lots more money (at least $3 billion per week), and assurances
that his tenure in command has been extended.
This outcome reflects the handiwork of someone skilled in the ways of
Washington. Yet the ultimate result is to allow the contradiction between
our military efforts in Iraq and our professed political purposes there
to persist.
* * *
Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli is one officer keen to confront rather than
ignore that contradiction. In an article appearing in the current issue
of the journal Military Review, General Chiarelli writes:
The U.S. as a Nation—and indeed most of the U.S. Government—has not
gone to war since 9/11. Instead the departments of Defense and State (as
much as their modern capabilities allow) and the Central Intelligence
Agency are at war while the American people and most the other
institutions of national power have largely gone about their normal
business.
Chiarelli is correct. His statement goes directly to the heart of the
matter. After the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to sustained bipartisan
applause, President Bush committed the United States to an open-ended
global war on terror. Having made that fundamental decision, the
president and Congress sent American soldiers off to fight that war while
urging the American people to distract themselves with other pursuits.
The American people have done as they were asked.
The result, six years later, is a massive and growing gap between the
resources required to sustain that global war, in Iraq and elsewhere, and
the resources actually available to do so. President Bush, with the Joint
Chiefs of Staff serving as enablers, has papered over that gap by sending
soldiers back for a third or fourth combat tour and, most recently, by
extending the length of those tours. In a country with a population that
exceeds 300 million, one-half of one percent of our fellow citizens bear
the burden of this global war. The other 99.5 percent of us have decided
to chill out.
The president has made no serious effort to mobilize the wherewithal that
his wars in Iraq and Afghanistan require. The Congress, liberal Democrats
voting aye, has made itself complicit in this shameful policy by
obligingly appropriating whatever sums of money the president has
requested, all, of course, in the name of “supporting the troops.”
Petraeus has now given this charade a further lease on life. In effect,
he is allowing the president and the Congress to continue dodging the
main issue, which comes down to this: if the civilian leadership wants to
wage a global war on terror and if that war entails pacifying Iraq, then
let’s get serious about providing what’s needed to complete the
mission—starting with lots more soldiers. Rather than curtailing the
ostensibly successful surge, Petraeus should broaden and deepen it. That
means sending more troops to Iraq, not bringing them home. And that
probably implies doubling or tripling the size of the United States Army
on a crash basis.
If the civilian leadership is unwilling to provide what’s needed, then
all of the talk about waging a global war on terror—talk heard not only
from the president but from most of those jockeying to replace
him—amounts to so much hot air. Critics who think the concept of the
global war on terror is fundamentally flawed will see this as a positive
development. Once we recognize the global war on terror for the
fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get serious about
designing a strategy to address the threat that we actually face, which
is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The antidote to Islamic
radicalism, if there is one, won’t involve invading and occupying places
like Iraq.
This defines Petraeus’s failure. Instead of obliging the president and
the Congress to confront this fundamental contradiction—are we or are we
not at war?—he chose instead to let them off the hook.
Of course, if he had done otherwise—if he had asked, say, to expand the
surge by adding yet another 50,000 troops—he would have distressed just
about everyone back in Washington. He might have paid a considerable
price career-wise. Certainly, he would have angered the JCS, antiwar
Democrats, and waffling Republicans who want the war to go away. Even the
president, Petraeus’s number-one fan, would have been surprised and
embarrassed by such a request.
Yet the anger and embarrassment would have been salutary. A great
political general doesn’t tell his masters what they want to hear. He
tells them what they need to hear, thereby nudging them to make decisions
that must be made if the nation’s interests are to be served. In this
instance, Petraeus provided cover for them to evade their
responsibilities.
Politically, it qualifies as a brilliant maneuver. The general’s
relationships with official Washington remain intact. Yet he has broken
faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted
his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly.
Andrew J. Bacevich is professor of history and international relations at
Boston University.
------
Gee.. from The American Conservative no less..... makes the moveON ad
seem mild by comparison..
I expect the Pugs in the House and Senate will be readying their
"resolutions" as we speak... and the reichtard noise machine will be on
this, like a starving dog on a T-Bone.. Yes ???
<snicker>
--
AW - Head "Democrats for NEWT" Campaign
<small but dangerous>
Bothrops Alticola
> http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html
>
> http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html
> Sycophant Savior
> General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington-if not in Baghdad.
> by Andrew J. Bacevich
> In common parlance, the phrase "political general" is an epithet, the
> inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any serious war, with big
> issues at stake, to assign command to a political general is to court
> disaster-so at least most Americans believe. But in fact, at the highest
> levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp of politics. At
> the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably intertwined. A
> general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not master the
> former.
> George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all
> "political generals" in the very best sense of the term. Their claims to
> immortality rest not on their battlefield exploits-Washington actually
> won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through brute force
> rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field commander at
> all-but on the skill they demonstrated in translating military power into
> political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great soldiers
> possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war's political dimension.
> David Petraeus is a political general.
-- lot of stuff snipped --
> Petraeus likes to portray himself as a thinking soldier. Having devoted
> his Ph.D. dissertation to the lessons of Vietnam, he qualifies as a
> serious student of counterinsurgencies.
-- some more stuff snipped--
FACT: Petreaus was a student at the Army's Command and General Staff
College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, in the standard year-long course
August 1982 - June 1983, Petreaus was one of 11 officers selected to
spend a second year (June 83 - June 84) at Leavenworth in a school of
advanced military studies set up by General Carl Vuono, later to be
Army Chief of Staff (Petreaus served as Vuono's aide and exec
assistant).
While in the school of advanced military studies, Petreaus learned of
a small department in the college that was collecting, analyzing, and
reviewing all the "lessons learned" from Vietnam, from the British
experience in Malaysia, and from the French experience in Algeria.
He
sucked up to that department and used their material for his PhD
dissertation. He is given credit for "authoring" the Army's
counterinsurgency manual -- bullshit -- he edited what other people
had spent years developing.
mg
Bush and his lackeys now just wait until after the primaries
are over and they have the Rightard vote sewed up.
Republicans will be standing in line waiting to tell the
world how insane George Bush and his war are.
"Amanda Williams" <p...@fu.com> wrote in message
news:Xns99B9EA4...@63.218.45.254...
> http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_09_24/article2.html
>
> Sycophant Savior
>
> General Petraeus wins a battle in Washington-if not in
> Baghdad.
>
> by Andrew J. Bacevich
>
> In common parlance, the phrase "political general" is an
> epithet, the
> inverse of the warrior or frontline soldier. In any
> serious war, with big
> issues at stake, to assign command to a political general
> is to court
> disaster-so at least most Americans believe. But in fact,
> at the highest
> levels, successful command requires a sophisticated grasp
> of politics. At
> the summit, war and politics merge and become inextricably
> intertwined. A
> general in chief not fully attuned to the latter will not
> master the
> former.
>
> George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower
> were all
> "political generals" in the very best sense of the term.
> Their claims to
> immortality rest not on their battlefield
> exploits-Washington actually
> won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through
> brute force
> rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field
> commander at
> all-but on the skill they demonstrated in translating
> military power into
> political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great
> soldiers
> possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war's political
> dimension.
>
> David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting
> his recent
> assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the "way
> forward," Petraeus
> demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst
> kind-one who
> done since the Iraq War began-namely, their jobs. He would
> have insisted
> upon the president and the Congress making decisions that
> wartime summons
> them-and not military commanders-to make. Instead,
> Petraeus issued
> everyone a pass.
>
> * * *
>
> In testifying before House and Senate committees about the
> current
> situation in Iraq, Petraeus told no outright lies. He made
> no blustery
> promises about "victory," a word notably absent from his
> testimony. The
> tone of the presentation was sober and measured. It
> contained the
> requisite references to complexity and challenge. Petraeus
> acknowledged
> miscalculation and disappointment. In contrast to his
> commander in chief,
> he did not claim that U.S. troops were "kicking ass."
>
> Yet the essence of his message was this: after four years
> of futile
> blundering, the United States has identified the makings
> of a successful
> strategy in Iraq. The new doctrine that Petraeus had
> devised and
> implemented-the concept of securing the population and
> thereby fostering
> conditions conducive to reconstruction and
> reconciliation-has produced
> limited but real progress. This gives Petraeus cause for
> hope that
> further efforts along these lines may yet enable the
> United States to
> create an Iraq that is stable, unified, and not a haven
> for terrorists.
> In so many words, Petraeus told Congress that senior U.S.
> commanders in
> Iraq had finally found the right roadmap. The way ahead
> may be long and
> difficult-indeed, it will be. But Petraeus and his key
> officers-notably, Gen. George Casey, the army chief of
> staff, and Adm.
> William Fallon, commander of United States Central
> Command-have publicly
> expressed views notably at odds with those of General
> Petraeus.
>
> The critics make a good case. Yet let us ignore them. Let
> us assume
> instead that Petraeus genuinely believes that he has
> broken the code in
> Iraq and that things are improving. Let's assume further
> that he is
> correct in that assessment.
>
> What then should he have recommended to the Congress and
> the president?
> That is, if the commitment of a modest increment of
> additional forces
> -the 30,000 troops comprising the surge, now employed in
> accordance with
> sound counterinsurgency doctrine -has begun to turn things
> of troops-many more than the United States has in Iraq
> relative to the
> size of the population there. He knows, too, that they
> require lots of
> time-on average, nine or ten years by his own publicly
> expressed
> estimation. The counter-insurgency manual that Petraeus
> helped draft
> prior to taking up command in Baghdad makes these points
> explicitly.
>
> If Petraeus actually believes that he can salvage
> something akin to
> success in Iraq and if he agrees with President Bush about
> the
> consequences of failure -genocidal violence, Iraq becoming
> a launching
> pad for terrorist attacks directed against the United
> States, the Middle
> East descending into chaos that consumes Israel, the
> oil-dependent global
> economy shattered beyond repair, all of this culminating
> in the emergence
> of a new Caliphate bent on destroying the West-then surely
> this moment of
> (supposed) promise is not a time for scrimping. Rather,
> now is the time
> to go all out-to insist upon a maximum effort.
>
> * * *
>
> There is only one plausible explanation for Petraeus's
> terminating a
> surge that has (he says) enabled coalition forces, however
> tentatively,
> to gain the upper hand. That explanation is politics-of
> the wrong kind.
>
> Given the current situation as Petraeus describes it, an
> incremental
> reduction in U.S. troop strength makes sense only in one
> regard: it
> serves to placate each of the various Washington
> constituencies that
> Petraeus has a political interest in pleasing.
>
> A modest drawdown responds to the concerns of Petraeus's
> fellow four
> stars, especially the Joint Chiefs, who view the stress
> being imposed on
> U.S. forces as intolerable. Ending the surge provides the
> Army and the
> Marine Corps with a modicum of relief.
>
> A modest drawdown also comes as welcome news for moderate
> Republicans in
> Congress. Nervously eyeing the forthcoming elections, they
> have wanted to
> go before the electorate with something to offer other
> than being
> identified with Bush's disastrous war. Now they can point
> to signs of
> change-indeed, Petraeus's proposed withdrawal of one
> The U.S. as a Nation-and indeed most of the U.S.
> Government-has not
> mission-starting with lots more soldiers. Rather than
> curtailing the
> ostensibly successful surge, Petraeus should broaden and
> deepen it. That
> means sending more troops to Iraq, not bringing them home.
> And that
> probably implies doubling or tripling the size of the
> United States Army
> on a crash basis.
>
> If the civilian leadership is unwilling to provide what's
> needed, then
> all of the talk about waging a global war on terror-talk
> heard not only
> from the president but from most of those jockeying to
> replace
> him-amounts to so much hot air. Critics who think the
> concept of the
> global war on terror is fundamentally flawed will see this
> as a positive
> development. Once we recognize the global war on terror
> for the
> fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get
> serious about
> designing a strategy to address the threat that we
> actually face, which
> is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The
> antidote to Islamic
> radicalism, if there is one, won't involve invading and
> occupying places
> like Iraq.
>
> This defines Petraeus's failure. Instead of obliging the
> president and
> the Congress to confront this fundamental
> contradiction-are we or are we
> not at war?-he chose instead to let them off the hook.
>
> Of course, if he had done otherwise-if he had asked, say,
> to expand the
> surge by adding yet another 50,000 troops-he would have