I don't often find myself linking to conservative magazines, but this piece by Andrew Bacevich is a fantastic analysis of General Petraeus and his recent efforts in Washington and in Iraq. Bacevich is a renowned military historian and professor of international relations. A self-described "Catholic conservative," he is also one of the most insightful critics of Bush administration international policy, and has been for years.
This past May, his son, a 27-year-old Lieutenant, was killed by a suicide bomber in Iraq.
Bacevich has impeccable credentials, a keen understanding of military and diplomatic affairs, and, one has to imagine, an extraordinarily heavy heart. He gets right to the crux of the matter when it comes to the Political General:
[I]n 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.
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.
The entire piece is simply -- and rightly -- devastating.
Bacevich goes on to explain the most intellectually indefensible argument of Petraeus's testimony: after an (ostensibly) effective surge, supposedly fueled by increased troop levels, he didn't move to exploit the advantage. If the increase was really helping us "win" the war, an honest position would have been to ask for more troops. Exploit the advantage, if indeed there is one. Bacevich explains,
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.
Indeed. It's really amazing that he has gotten such a pass on all of this; history, I think, will not be so kind.
