Petraeus...does that rhyme with Betray us?
How much credence should Gen. Petraeus' reports be given?
Gen. David Petraeus, who will descend down upon Washington in September and reveal once and for all whether we are winning in Iraq, gave a lengthy interview yesterday about the Great Progress we are making with the Surge. He chose as his interviewer the hard-hitting, non-partisan, and well-regarded war journalist, Hugh Hewitt, who wrote a book last year about how Republicans will dominate our government forever and one this year on the Towering Greatness of Mitt Romney.
The "interview" consisted of Hewitt making one adoring, pro-war statement after the next, masquerading as questions, with Petraeus eagerly agreeing and then "elaborating" with the standard White House talking points. There is obviously no need to "wait until September" to know what Gen. Petraeus is going to say. It's all right there in the very first "questions" and answers from the Hewitt interview:
HH: Welcome, General. You took over command of the multinational forces in February of this year, February 10. In the past five months, how have conditions in Iraq changed?
DP: Well, obviously, we have been surging our forces during that time. We have added five Army brigade combat teams, two Marine battalions, and a Marine expeditionary unit, and some enablers, as they're called. And over the last month, that surge of forces has turned into a surge of offensive operations.
And we have achieved what we believe is a reasonable degree of tactical momentum on the ground, gains against the principal near-term threat, al Qaeda-Iraq, and also gains against what is another near-term threat, and also potentially the long term threat, Shia militia extremists as well.
As you may have heard, that today, we announced the capture of the senior Iraqi leader of al Qaeda-Iraq, and that follows in recent weeks the detention of some four different emirs, as they're called, the different area leaders of al Qaeda, six different foreign fighter facilitators, and a couple dozen other leaders, in addition to killing or capturing hundreds of other al Qaeda-Iraq operatives.
HH: Do you think al Qaeda in Iraq is buckling, General Petraeus?
DP: Well, it's probably too soon to say that, but we think that we have them off plan. Now having said that, they clearly retain and have demonstrated, tragically in recent, the past week or so, the ability to continue to carry out sensational attacks. . . .
So there has been considerable progress against them, but they do continue to receive foreign fighters through Syria, who become suicide bombers in many cases, and they do certainly have an ability to regenerate, to regroup, and to come back at us. . . .
We announced the killing of two, and it turns out three, actually, al Turki brothers. These are, not surprisingly, from Turkey originally, part of al Qaeda leadership, spent time in Afghanistan in past years, and were sent into Northern Iraq to help shore up the network up there after it took significant blows, particularly in the Mosul area. And we've managed to get the final fifty meters, if you will, on them after sort of pursuing them for some months, and did kill them several weeks ago.
It sounds like the Surge sure is working, we are winning, Al Qaeda is on the run, The Terrorists are being killed, and Freedom is on the March. But while we are making progress, there is still work ahead to be done in order to achieve Victory, so we must stay longer.
Despite the Mandate Orthodoxy that Gen. Petraeus be treated as the Objective, Unassailably Credible Oracle for how we are doing in Iraq and whether we are winning, his track record of quite dubious claims over the last several years about the war strongly negates that view. It ought to go without saying that no military commander -- particularly in the midst of a disastrous four-year war -- is entitled to blind faith and to be placed above being questioned. It is not only proper, but critically necessary, to subject happy war claims from the military to great scrutiny.
In general, military commanders do not typically pronounce their own strategies to have failed; quite the opposite. The need for skepticism here is particularly acute given that there are plenty of Generals with equally impressive military pedigrees who disagree vigorously with Petraeus. War supporters -- who are attempting now to make criticisms of Petraeus off-limits -- long disputed the claims and views of Generals Casey and Abaziad, often quite vigorously, even insultingly. The statements about war from military commanders ought to be subjected to every bit as much scrutiny and skepticism as anyone else's.
But Petraeus in particular has demonstrated that his statements merit particularly potent scrutiny. So many of the misleading government claims over the past several years about The Great Victory we are Achieving in Iraq have been based upon optimistic claims from Petraeus that turned out to be highly questionable, to put it generously.
Indeed, Americans were flooded with good news about Iraq at the end of 2005, the great bulk of which stemmed from an overwhelmingly optimistic November 2005 public report (.pdf), filled with happy news, given by Gen. Petraeus as part of a slide show at the St. Regis Hotel in Washington. Using a series of carefully selected, emotionally manipulative photographs from Iraq, Petraeus disputed "the notion that Baghdad is, if you will, chaos"; showed pictures of various Sunnis and Shiites standing together to claim that there was increasing cooperation between the two groups; and especially touted the Great Progress being made in preparing and training Iraqi forces and the Iraqi police. Petraeus' script was filled with claims like this:
The bulk of his presentation was devoted to "documenting" how much progress had been made in training Iraqi troops and police.
Predictably, Petraeus' claims spawned multiple news accounts and Op-Eds touting the Great Progress we were making in 2005 in standing up the Iraqi troops so that we could stand down, using similar though even more excited language than Petraeus used with Hewitt yesterday. The Air Force Times reported on November 5, 2005 (via Lexis):
There are more than 211,000 members of the Iraqi security force, including police, border patrol and military members, said Lt. Gen. David Petraeus, former multinational security transition commander in Iraq, and the number keeps growing. . . .
Petraeus, now the commanding general of the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., compares the training of Iraqis to a stampede, and to illustrate, he pointed to a painting by Frederick Remington.
"I can tell you there is very substantial momentum in this effort," Petraeus said, pointing to a reproduction of "The Stampede," which shows a galloping horse, during remarks at an event sponsored by the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Nov. 8 in Washington.
In November, 2005, Petraeus claimed there was "very substantial momentum" in standing up Iraqi forces; with Hewitt yesterday, it was a "reasonable degree of tactical momentum" with the Surge. Is there any doubt we will hear exactly the same thing come September?
Even in the Spring of 2006, when the Iraq civil war erupted by all accounts, comments from Petraeus continued to be cited as proof of how well our occupation was progressing. From the U.S. Army War College's Parameters in March, 2006:
Most important, there is one critical difference -- and it is that our current strategy is showing signs of succeeding. Iraq's third successful election in the course of one year provides evidence that we and the Iraqis are successfully isolating the insurgents politically, if not physically. . .
The National Strategy for Victory in Iraq states that progress on the political front has led ordinary Iraqis to provide better intelligence on insurgent activity. According to the Brookings Institution's December 2005 Iraq Index, such tips reached an all-time high in November. More important, the Iraqis' increasing commitment to the political process has led to an increasing and tangible commitment to the Iraqi state. In a key indicator, recruiting for Iraqi security forces continues to outpace requirements. Moreover, according to Lieutenant General David Petraeus, those security forces are increasingly capable of independent operations.
salon.com |
