General Petraeus, Meet President Obama

The human shield that Bush and his true believers have used to prolong the war in Iraq is now speaking out against making the same mistake in Iran.

Gen. David Petraeus, nominated to lead US forces in the Middle East and Central Asia, will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee today that he supports continued engagement with international and regional partners to find diplomatic, economic and military leverage to deal with the challenge of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's regime.

The Washington Post reports that, in written answers to questions posed by the Committee, Petraeus said the possibility of military action against Iran should be retained as a "last resort" but that the US "should make every effort to engage by use of the whole of government, developing further leverage rather than simply targeting discrete threats."

This Senate testimony today may come as a shock to John McCain, Joe Lieberman et al who have been attacking their colleague Barack Obama for saying just that on the Presidential campaign trail.

Cynics may find Petraeus' attitude little more than a political adjustment to the inevitability of a Democratic Commander-in-Chief next year, but the General, despite his fronting for Bush-Cheney policies, has been a closet realist who has always maintained that we "can't kill our way out of Iraq."

It's encouraging to see him coming out of the closet.

Iraq Skin Game

Now that President Petraeus and Vice-President Crocker have given us our marching orders, someone named George W. Bush will emerge today at the White House to rubber-stamp them, suspending troop withdrawals after this summer but sweetening the bitter medicine by cutting combat tours back to 12 months.

These actions will bring troop deployment back to where it was at the start of last year, a thousand American deaths and several hundred billions of dollars ago.

Even the good news is illusory. The tour cutbacks will affect only troops sent to Iraq in August or later. As the president of Veterans for America points out, nearly half of the Army's units are now deployed for 15 months and will stay there, making the "hollow announcement...nothing more than political posturing at the expense of our troops."

The net effect of this week's doings, as the New York Times points out quoting "senior administration and military officials" is "a bleak assessment that Iraqi forces remain unprepared to take over the mission of securing their own nation."

John McCain assures Americans the Surge has been a success, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid seems closer to the mark in saying that “based on everything we have heard, we can reach only one conclusion: With 160,000 courageous American troops serving in Iraq, President Bush has an exit strategy for just one man--himself--on Jan. 20, 2009.”

Boxer's Breakthrough

You have to get to the last two paragraphs of the Washington Post story on yesterday's hearings to learn that Gen. David Petraeus actually heard something one of the US Senators was saying:

"The United States was still funding the roughly 90,000 Sunni security volunteers who Maliki's Shiite-dominated government is reluctant to put on its payroll, Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) told Petraeus. 'I'm just asking you why you would object to asking [Iraq] to pay for that entire program, given all we are giving them in blood and everything else.'

"'It is a very fair question,' Petraeus responded, 'and I think that if there's anything that the ambassador and I will take back to Iraq candidly after this morning's session and this afternoon's is, in fact, to ask those kinds of questions more directly.'"

Very noblesse oblige of our Middle East proconsul to acknowledge that, after all those long hours, something actually registered behind that stony stare as the plebians were ranting about his management of the empire's affairs.

If Petraeus asks politely enough, maybe Maliki will also agree to give him some advance notice the next time he decides to play George Washington in Basra and draw us into bailing him out--at our expense, of course.

Iraq's Cruelest Month Coming Up

Next week, against a backdrop of cherry blossoms on the Potomac, we will get the latest Petraeus-Crocker production of "Blood and Sand" for an audience of the hollow men and women in both houses of Congress.

When they get here, the General and the Ambassador will no doubt give us another suave performance to explain the latest twist in the Mideast theater of the absurd--how our Iraqi lawmakers have been in Iran appealing to the head of the Revolutionary Guard, branded a terrorist organization by Congress last August, to persuade Muqtada al Sadr to order his followers to stop killing people in Baghdad and Basra.

If all this feels like being trapped in an endless Pinter play, consider the recent monologues of Andrew Cordesman, one of our most knowledgeable observers. Last summer, describing Iraq as "three dimensional chess in the dark while someone is shooting at you," he made a cautious case for starting to withdraw troops early this year. A month ago, another trip to Iraq and Afghanistan persuaded him that "these are wars that can still be won" if we stay another decade or more.

Today Cordesman describes "worrisome possibilities" that could deny us "victory" in Iraq--the cooperating Sunni tribes and militias could turn against the central government, ethnic conflicts to control territory in the north could lead to fighting in Kirkuk, Mosul and other areas and the political struggle between the dominant Shiite parties could become an armed conflict. (Could? Check the headlines.)

In 2004, as a division commander, Gen.Petraeus was asking a question to which he clearly had no answer, “Tell me how this ends.” Last year, he was telling us that "we can't shoot our way out of Iraq." No matter what he has to say now, how do we persuade him and Congress to stop sleepwalking with Bush toward the edge of another precipice?

McCain's Free Ride

While Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton continue their mud fight this week, John McCain is on a six-day campaign trip to the Mideast and Europe--at taxpayer expense--polishing his image as a warrior-statesman.

As ranking Republican member of the Armed Services Committee, the candidate will be accompanied by the Iraq Rover Boys, Senate colleagues Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, to help him "understand and keep up to date, particularly where young Americans may be in harm's way."

The trip is a perfect metaphor for our situation in Iraq. Humvees, tanks and helicopters will be protecting the politicians as they preen for the TV cameras while the bleeding goes on out of sight. Even the Democrats' tower of jello Harry Reid has politely pointed out that he wouldn't make such a trip himself, preferring to stay "more focused on the eight soldiers killed yesterday."

It won't all be waste. Graham may get another good buy on an Oriental rug as he did last spring when McCain staged his heavily fortified stroll in a Baghdad market and, in the European stage of the trip, there will be time to pose with European prime ministers and attend a $1000-a-plate fundraising lunch at the ancestral home of Princess Diana's family.

But all is not sunny in McCain's world view. Before leaving, he told Pennsylvania voters he is worried that al Qaeda might stage spectacular attacks in Iraq to tilt the election against him.

"We have achieved enormous success," he said, "but they are still a very viable and tough enemy. There is no doubt in my mind that the surge is succeeding. Thank God for Gen. Petraeus, one of the greatest generals in American history."

Later today, in Baghdad, McCain will be able to tell Petraeus in person and pose for pictures that won't do his campaign any harm.

Iraq, Iraq, Iraq

Exit polls tomorrow night will undoubtedly show voters went into the booths worried about health care, home foreclosures, job security and other fallout from an impending recession.

Their concerns are understandable, but they may want to recall that a little over a year ago, in November 2006, their ballots gave control of Congress to Democrats with a mandate to stop the war in Iraq.

That did not happen and since then voters have been lulled by an Imperial President, using Gen. Petraeus as a human shield, into forgetting that American deaths there now total 3,945 at a cost to taxpayers exceeding $10 billion a month.

All the Republican candidates, except Ron Paul, are in favor of continuing to do that.

As for the Democrats, in 2002, I wrote to Sen. Hillary Clinton pleading with her not to give George W. the power to invade Iraq and warning that, if she did, I would never vote for her for any office. Tomorrow I will keep that promise.

Rash Judgments of 2007

If journalists are historians in a hurry, bloggers are first responders, dashing to each disaster in search of finding some sense, but there are times when smoke gets in our eyes.

For your entertainment and my mental health, herewith a few of the year's least prescient posts, out of more than a thousand, where this witness arrived at the scene and got it wrong:

In January, there was hope the proposed Surge would isolate Bush in his madness, followed by a fantasy that voters might look for authenticity in the next President, perhaps in a series of substantive debates.

Last spring, with all respect to the man's honor and integrity, there were qualms about John McCain's losing it. (Now in Iowa, he is being called the "Comeback Codger.")

Gen. Petraeus was compared to Eisenhower and seen as "the man who could end the war," but he ended up doing more than anyone else to prolong it and gave Congressional Republicans enough cover to keep backing Bush without fear of losing their jobs in next year's elections.

When Karl Rove resigned, the MSM and blogosphere were urged to stop paying attention to the "biggest bottom feeder of our time and look ahead to putting back some semblance of decency into American politics." (He's a columnist for Newsweek now.)

In September, it seemed that Fred Thompson's playing it cool could be a winning strategy, but he turned out to be playing it comatose.

As late as mid-November, Rudy Giuliani looked as bulletproof to scandal as Bill Clinton was in 1992. A few weeks later his poll numbers were diving in a mudslide of revelations.

Blogging is an attempt to share thoughts and feelings, to connect with others, but sometimes the medium delivers a defective message. Sorry, mea culpa and a resolution to try to do better. Happy New Year!

Is This a Great Country or What?

In Washington, our Congress has settled in to business as usual now that the Surge is going so well. Democrats are overjoyed at news of Al Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize, while Republicans are fresh from the triumph of sliming a brain-injured 12-year-old boy to make sure he and others like him don’t rip us off by getting health care insurance.

In Iraq today, other people acting in my name and yours killed six women and nine children during an air and ground attack on senior Al Qaeda leaders. We issued a statement of regret that “civilians are hurt or killed while Coalition forces search to rid Iraq of terrorism."

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, AP reports, “has recently confronted top American commander Gen. David Petraeus about what he sees as overly aggressive U.S. tactics that harm innocent civilians, according to Iraqi officials.”

Last Friday, a pre-dawn U.S. raid on Khalis, a Shiite city north of Baghdad, killed 25 people when troops called in air strikes while hunting suspected smugglers of arms from Iran to Baghdad. Village leaders said the victims included civilians, but the military insisted the 25 killed were militants.

Meanwhile, Shiites and Sunnis are reported to be making no progress toward national reconciliation. But the Surge is working just fine, isn’t it?

We can all go on getting Halloween costumes for the kids and maybe driving somewhere for a little leaf-peeping.

MoveOn, Standby and Rathering

The brouhaha over the “General Betray Us” ad evokes mixed feelings in a veteran of advertising acceptance and pricing wars.

Today the Public Editor of the New York Times chides the paper for both the content of and charges for the MoveOn ad that has replaced troop withdrawal from Iraq as the main subject of political contention for almost two weeks.

First, should the Times have accepted the ad? Not without a change of headline. The executive in charge says he was influenced by the question mark, but that won’t wash. He discloses rejection of a previous MoveOn ad until a doctored photo of Dick Cheney was removed. Tacky, insulting, libelous word play on anybody’s name is just as unacceptable.

Standby pricing is tricky. Ostensibly used to fill unsold advertising space at the last minute, because press forms are no more flexible than airline seats, it is often used by overeager sales people to inflate ad lineage figures.

In this case, if MoveOn had not been guaranteed the ad would run that Monday, the price would be defensible. If the Times had retained the option to run it at its own convenience, that would have qualified as standby. But apparently that was not what happened.

Ordinarily, all this would be marginally interesting to media people, if the Republican attack machine had not jumped on it to divert attention from the real Iraq debate, exactly as they did in 2004 with Dan Rather’s reporting on George Bush’s evasion of combat service in Vietnam.

Rather is now suing CBS to correct that distortion, but somebody should be defending the Times from being Rathered over the Iraq war now. It’s too bad political parties don’t have the equivalent of a Public Editor to hold them accountable for their mistakes, few of which are as innocuous as those of newspapers.

A Preview of Iraq Without Us

During his testimony last week, Gen. Petraeus described what’s happening in the city of Basra as “mildly heartening.”

Despite worries about Iran’s increasing influence in the Shiite city, Petraeus noted, "Interestingly there is an accommodation down there right now that is the kind of Iraqi solution to problems in the south.”

As British troops leave, Basra offers a preview of what might happen when the U. S. gets out of the whole country. In a report-in-depth today, the Christian Science Monitor describes “Iraq's second-largest city where Shiite parties, militiamen, and criminal gangs all are locked in a vicious fight for power...

“This is a city that operates according to a fragile balance of military force, fear, cronyism, and business interests...Basra is a predominately Shiite city, yet it is still imbued with fear of kidnappings, assassinations, and being caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.

“This instability reveals that the violence in Iraq is not only sectarian or the result of insurgent activity, but is also caused by deep-seated political and tribal rivalries and an intense scramble for power.”

The overall picture sounds like a compression of American history from the Wild West to the Roaring Twenties.

"We are in a wait-and-see approach with Basra,” Gen. Petraeus told Congress, “but we have every expectation that Basra will be resolved by Iraqis."

How long will we have to wait and see? The British are leaving. If Basra is going to be “resolved” by Iraqis, why not all of Iraq?

We are not going to spread sweet reason among fanatical factions who will outwait us no matter how long we are there. What, besides George W. Bush’s place in history as a President who didn’t admit defeat, do we accomplish by staying?

McCain's Tenuous Comeback

Once the media writes an obituary, the departed is supposed to stay dead. But John McCain is showing signs of new life with David Petraeus as his savior and Don Rumsfeld as the straw man to distance himself from Bush’s bungling of Iraq.

The Straight Talk Express, now re-dubbed “No Surrender,” is on the road again picking up some momentum but, as seen on “Meet the Press” today, McCain will have to overcome not only other Republican contenders but his own tendency toward testiness under fire.

In debating John Kerry, he started out with a smooth, subdued testimonial to his own good judgment about pacifying Iraq that was ignored by Rumsfeld et al but is now being vindicated by Petraeus’ “success.”

But as Kerry challenged him, McCain’s smile froze, jaws tightened and he kept using his tell-tale expression of hostility, “My friend”--exposing the hot-headed impatience with criticism that is the other side of the affability McCain always shows with Jon Stewart.

As the oldest candidate in the Republican field, it will be hard enough to emulate Bill Clinton’s feat in 1992 as the “Comeback Kid,” but McCain has some traction now as the most experienced potential Commander-in-Chief to navigate a Republican course toward peace in Iraq as the polls show Fred Thompson slowing the effects of Rudy Giuliani’s conversion to conservatism.

But if McCain is to make his case for a strong, steady hand at the helm in the face of terrorist turbulence, he had better start showing it.

If not, media pundits will be ready and waiting to justify their obituaries.

An Inconvenient Death

The President’s speech writer had to make a last-minute addition to his TV talk tonight about “the way forward” in Iraq.

Right after “The changes in Anbar show all Iraqis what becomes possible when extremists are driven out,” he had to add “Earlier today, one of the brave tribal sheiks who helped lead the revolt against al-Qaeda was murdered.” Abu Risha was the head of the Anbar Awakening Council with whom the President had posed for a smiling picture just 10 days ago.

“This is a tragic loss," Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, said of the Sunni sheik's death. "It shows how significant his importance was and it shows al-Qaeda in Iraq remains a very dangerous and barbaric enemy."

By the inverted logic that is by now so familiar, the assassination of the key man in our Anbar “victory” proves how desperate the defeated enemy has become.

As a reminder that we are fighting on at least two fronts, another U.S. general said today that an attack on our headquarters garrison this week was carried out with the kind of 240 mm rocket that Iran provides to Shiite extremists.

One person was killed and 11 wounded in the attack Tuesday at Camp Victory, the headquarters of Multinational Forces-Iraq, by a rocket from a Baghdad district infiltrated by breakaway factions of the Mahdi Army militia of Muqtada al-Sadr.

For anyone keeping score, that keeps the Sunni and Shiite murderers tied in what the President tonight termed “the gains we are making” in Iraq. But as he reassured us, it’s going to be a long contest, even if it has to go into overtime.

Bush's Blood-Soaked Shell Game

After six months of hiding behind Petraeus, the Decider will emerge tomorrow to tell a grateful nation that he accepts the General’s plan to start drawing down troops from Iraq.

Americans who haven’t been following the shell game closely may believe the President is finally responding to their desire to start getting out. But of course he will only be v-e-r-y slowly removing the 30,000 troops he added this year and ensuring that the war will go on until he leaves office in January 2009.

If Congress fails to act, another 1500 young people will die, ten times that many may be maimed and another $100 billion that might have been spent on education, housing, health care and infrastructure will be shipped to Baghdad to keep a collapsing country together until a new President inherits the wreckage. Bush’s Pottery Barn rule is you break it, you sweep the pieces under the rug.

Congressional Democrats will huff and puff but, more likely than not, endangered Republican “centrists” will decide they have enough political cover to survive next November and do nothing to end the war but cluck sympathetically for the voters.

Compared to this bunch, the old carnival sharpies gave the rubes more of an even break.

Petraeus' Technocratitis

In 2004, as a division commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus was asking a philosophical question to which he clearly had no answer, “Tell me how this ends.”

At his first press conference after taking command this year, he was still focused on the broad picture, saying, “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq...There needs to be a political aspect.”

In his appearance before Congress today, Gen. Petraeus seems to have put all doubts aside as he gives what amounts to an unqualified testimonial to the “progress” of the Surge and joins the chorus of chaos-sayers if we significantly withdraw our troops in the near future.

Given his intelligence and sincerity, the most obvious diagnosis is that the General has contracted a severe case of technocratitis--so involved in the security mission he is overseeing that he no longer has the perspective of three years ago, of Iraq as an endlessly frustrating enterprise.

It is Congress’ job to see the war in the perspective Petraeus had back then and has clearly lost to the tunnel vision of his assignment now.

Tell us how this ends, General, and when.

American Traditions: Bush's Second Strike

In the second half of the twentieth century, Republicans expressed fears that core American values could be subverted by a foreign ideology. They were right.

After years of tearing down the separation between church and state, George W. Bush is now politicizing the military to a point that should impress his allies, Pervez Musharraf and Nouri al-Maliki.

Tomorrow, as General David Petraeus testifies before Congress, the antiwar group MoveOn.org will run a full-page advertisement in the New York Times under the headline: "General Petraeus or General Betray us? Cooking the books for the White House."

The Standard calls this “disgusting,” and such Generals as Washington and Eisenhower who became Presidents would likely agree.

Washington spoke about “an insidious foe...plotting the ruin of both, by sowing the seeds of discord and separation between the civil and military powers of the continent.”

In his farewell address, Eisenhower famously warned against “the disastrous rise of misplaced power” by the military-industrial complex, “Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of...defense with our peaceful methods and goals.”

Now Bush is breaking down the barriers between military and civilian by attempting to use Petraeus and “the generals” who agree with him, after replacing those who don’t, as a battering ram against Congress to keep them from challenging and changing his disastrous policies.

The invective of the ad against Petraeus is misplaced. He is doing his job in the way that the Commander-in-Chief has defined it. It’s that definition that is now not only causing ruin in Iraq but subverting the Constitution.

Rolling Out the Iran War

In 2002, Andrew Card, then Bush’s Chief of Staff, told the New York Times why the drumbeat for war against Iraq started in September: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August.”

It’s September again, this year’s product is war against Iran and the sales pitches have started.

“Iran’s pursuit of...nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust,” President Bush told war veterans last week. Promising to apply diplomatic pressures first (sound familiar?), he nonetheless vowed, “We will confront this danger before it is too late.”

In the U.K. Telegraph, a story is planted about war-gaming a blockade of Iran: “"The results were impressive. The policy recommendations eliminated virtually all of the negative outcomes."

Ever-faithful John Bolton, our unconfirmable former ambassador to the U.N. is telling Israelis via video hookup that President Bush “has made clear that a nuclear Iran is not acceptable."

Even Gen. Petraeus is not too busy surging in Iraq to observe the “malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed.”

Sen. Bernie Sanders, pointing out that the “Fox propaganda machine” is at work again on the Iran campaign, urges “the mass media not to play the same craven role that they played in Iraq, where they essentially collapsed and became a megaphone for Bush's policies."

In five years, it is clear the Bush-Cheney Administration has learned nothing. Have the American people and their media?

Petraeus' Gung-Ho Preview

Like any theatrical piece, “The David Petraeus Show” is having out-of-town tryouts before opening in Washington two weeks from now.

Today, the General gave an upbeat performance. He told the Australian in an interview at his Baghdad headquarters there has been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year, a doubling in the seizure of insurgents' weapons caches between January and August, a rise in the number of al-Qaeda "kills and captures" and a fall in the number of coalition deaths from roadside bombings.

The Surge, he claimed, has turned U.S. forces into pursuers instead of defenders. "And that is a much better place to be than to be doing a deliberate attack into their defenses, like we had to do in Ramadi," he said. "Ramadi was like Stalingrad."

More ominous was the impression that the General was toeing the Bush-Cheney line about Iran.

"There is growing concern,” he said, “by the Iraqi Government, by us, and our own Government as we have learned more and more about the degree of this malign involvement of the Iranian Quds force with the militia extremists that have been supported by them, trained, equipped, armed, funded and even in some cases directed."

If this is the monologue he is working on for his Congressional appearance, Gen. Petraeus may end up turning the discussion about getting out of Iraq into a debate about invading Iran.

Has anybody been helping him with the script? The war critics had better be preparing their rebuttal to a new Petraeus offensive.

September Song for Iraq

All year long, politicians of both parties have been tuning up for September. Now, as the lyrics say, the days are dwindling down to a precious few for Congressional Republicans who have to face the music next fall, but George Bush is still playing the waiting game in Iraq.

He now plans to ask for another $50 billion to keep funding the war in the belief that the mixed signals of progress that Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are bringing to legislators will be enough to cow Congress into going along.

But the White House may be misreading the sheet music. John Warner’s little solo last week following Dick Lugar’s aria should reinforce earlier humming by Mitch McConnell and John Boehner that the chorus of yea-sayers is thinning out. Even the "sliming" of Congressional visitors to the war zone this month seems to be backfiring.

Add to all that unprecedented cacophony among the military, who are sounding notes of discord about what to do next.

Starting next week, there will be loud disharmony in the Washington air.

Checking Out al Maliki

The problem with puppet governments is that they come with strings. In Iraq, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki keeps trying to show he’s not our man but keeps tripping over his ties to fellow Shiites and losing Sunnis who don’t trust him. Now he’s losing us, too.

President Bush is expressing “frustration,” and Ambassador Ryan Crocker is echoing him: "We do expect results, as do the Iraqi people, and our support is not a blank check." So is the No. 2 commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen Raymond Odierno, using same “blank check” expression.

The American people meanwhile are picking up a monthly tab of $9 billion dollars and 100 lost lives while the President keeps saying “if the government doesn't respond to the demands of the people, they will replace the government. That's up to the Iraqis to make that decision.”

But which Iraqis and when? As we keep coaching from the sidelines and talking about checks, blank or otherwise, how do we persuade the world we’re not pulling the strings? And if they replace al Maliki, most likely with an even more openly Shiite partisan, what happens then?

When Crocker and Gen. Petraeus give us their progress report next month, Congress will want an update on al Maliki’s checking account to go with it.

The Menace of Mr. Smooth

Not only was Robert Gates an Eagle Scout in his youth but he grew up to become president of the National Eagle Scout Association. Unlike his grating predecessor as Secretary of Defense, Don Rumsfeld, Gates is soporific and therein may lie his menace to America.

Today on Meet the Press, Gates lulled us with his uninflected claim of “positive things happening at the local level” in Iraq, “confidence in the evaluation that Ambassador Crocker and General Petraeus are going to make in early September” and a reminder he had told the Iraqi parliament that “every day that we buy you, we’re buying it with American blood, and the idea of you going on vacation is unacceptable.”

All this sounds sane and plausible, but American blood keeps flowing and Gates, by not being cocky and condescending like Rumsfeld, is enabling it. His intelligence and rationality may doing more damage.

In the subtitle of his memoirs was the phrase “the ultimate insider,” and Gates has certainly been that for almost four decades, most of it with the C.I.A., loyal to the point of almost being prosecuted for his part in the Iran-Contra scandal.

After leaving government to become a college president, Gates in 2005 declined the newly created position of uber-Director of National Intelligence saying he "had nothing to look forward to in D.C.” But he couldn’t refuse the offer to succeed Rumsfeld.

From his demeanor and statements, and as a former member of the Iraq Study Group, Robert Gates clearly understands the futility of the enterprise there. But he has spent his life being a good and loyal servant of those in power, Reagan and both Bushes.

It’s unlikely that he wakes in the middle of the night with pangs over what he is buying with American blood, but it would be comforting to believe he is capable of that.