The General Petraeus Redux

 

Contrary to media hype, most people don’t like war, not even the most “rabid” or “hard core” conservatives.  The Prussian soldier, military historian and theorist, Gen. Karl von Clausewitz (1780-1831), famously said, “War is merely a continuation of politics,” which this week’s Congressional hearings about progress in Iraq clearly demonstrate, although the context in which Clausewitz made his statement was different from the situation in Iraq today. 

 

No one can argue with the fact that Marine Corps Lt. Gen. David Petraeus is accountable to civilian authority under our system of government.  However, in my mind, that does not mean he is or should be responsible to most of the politicians who occupy the halls of the U.S. Congress, especially those who turn Congressional hearings into an opportunity for political grandstanding and harvesting votes from their constituencies.  Nor should the general be required to share detailed operational plans, including responding to feckless and persistent demands to know exactly when we will be able to leave Iraq.

One thing we’re no longer hearing is that the U.S. is bogged down in the middle of a civil war in Iraq and that we should pull out our troops to protect them.  Gen. Petraeus presented strong evidence that the surge has been working, although he does caution that the situation is still “fragile and reversible.”

 

Max Boot wrote in the Los Angeles Times (“Resist the urge to leave Iraq,” April 8, 2008), “Violence has already dropped back to pre-March levels, and Iraq is demonstrably more peaceful now than it was before the surge.  Civilian deaths are down more than 80% and American deaths are down more than 60% since December…Overall, according to Frederick W. Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute, the government of Iraq ‘has now met 12 out of the original 18 benchmarks set for it, including four out of the six key legislative benchmarks.  It has made substantial progress on five more, and only one remains truly stalled.’  The one benchmark that remains stalled is the hydrocarbon law, but its purpose (the equitable sharing of oil revenues) is being accomplished de facto through the budget.”

Boot also noted, “The security forces are growing in size (from fewer than 500,000 in 2006 to more than 600,000 today)…The government’s most corrosive problem is the failure to deliver basic services.”

 

So, even with evidence of significant progress available, the question that is invariably asked is, “When can we withdraw from Iraq?”  However, perhaps a better question is, “What will happen if we pull our troops out precipitously or prematurely?”  The consensus is that the Iraq war will become a major defeat for the U.S., embolden our enemies, lead to massive loss of life and destruction of property in Iraq and relinquish control of the third largest source of the world’s oil to Iran. 

U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Mass., who is a member of the Armed Service Committee, “deftly summed the last two years of Democratic Party posturing as well as the Democrats’ talking points,” when he said at the hearings, “Hear no progress in Iraq, see no progress in Iraq, but most of all speak of no progress in Iraq.”

There’s really no surprise in Sen. Lieberman’s observation.  After all, we’re in the middle of a presidential election campaign, and the Democratic Party is heavily invested in our defeat.  To my knowledge, it is the first time in American history that anything like this has happened.  This time around, politics has not stopped at the waters’ edge.