Yesterday and today General David Petraeus met with Congress to deliver his much awaited briefing, although at this point most folks (including on the Hill) have already made up their minds about his testimony.The event just leaves me sad, and feeling somewhat empty. I believe Petraeus is basically an honorable man. I believe the MoveOn.org ad in the New York Times was a bit over the top and insulting as well. I also believe that the White House—even if they didn’t “write his report”—probably put one hell of a lot of pressure on the man to spin the facts like a top.
I basically believe what he says—but it isn’t what I want to hear. Readers of my blog know I’m pretty liberal (although I try hard to be fair), but I must disagree with the left-most elements of the Democratic Party that are pushing hard for immediate withdrawal. That could be a catastrophe, not just for Iraq but (more importantly) for our troops.
Leaving hastily now would simply make our troops vulnerable. We need a steady draw-down, slow enough that the contractors and equipment can be evacuated in an orderly fashion. Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been pretty straight forward in talking about this, saying not what folks want to hear but instead bravely saying what must be said.
While overly harsh, the MoveOn.org ad does focus some light in a good direction—the Bizarro World numbers in some of the Department of Defense’s statistics. It is true that car bombings—even those such as the enormously deadly and obviously sectarian-driven bombing in northern Iraq a few months ago—are not considered in the “sectarian violence” death and injury counts. In World War II terms, this is like counting up the damage by individual German soldiers sneaking into Britain but ignoring the Blitz. Other times Petraeus’ charts began at differing start times, from weeks to years ago, always in service to the best numbers. It’s true that security gains in some areas have been made, some of them significant, but the White House trumpeting them is hardly deserved. The worst offender is the President’s continual citing of "our success in Al Anbar province"—a region that owes its lower rate of violence far more to tribal leaders turning against outside terrorists months before the surge even began, in the interest of protecting their own families (and sometimes their smuggling operations). In other areas violence is "down," but from when? Last year, when it was far higher than the year before?
I also have anger about the situation aplenty. Anger at the Administration’s decision to go to war, that put us in this intractable mess in the first place. And don’t let the pundits try to spin that, with all the “all the world’s intelligence agencies believed Iraq was a threat” and “read all these quotes my Democrats back then” nonsense. And that’s what it is—nonsense. This administration alone slanted the intelligence to push their case for war. This administration alone orchestrated a huge media push and talked about mushroom clouds, conflating 9/11 and Iraq and playing upon the feelings of a wounded and grieving nation. This administration alone ignored the UN and inspectors and the view of other countries and pushed relentlessly toward war, just as they would now begin to do with Iran.
I look at many of the Republican forerunners with fear and amazement—fear because they are so very much like Bush and amazement that some folks enjoy tough talk and yet still fail to see the emperor has no clothes. Rudy Giuliani in particular is demonstrating—at least in public now, before the general election—a slew of dangerously familiar traits: the tendency to wrongly and purposefully conflate varied countries and terrorist groups, stubbornness, a preference for military over diplomatic solutions even when the former is likely to fail, unwillingness to understand the enemy or the reasons terrorism begins, etc. It’s truly scary.
As far as the “surge” goes, let’s remember that the whole purpose for the surge wasn’t simply to clamp down the violence—something one can assume will be automatic if you dump a huge mass of troops into any one area—but to allow Nouri al-Maliki’s central government a chance to bring the warring factions together.
“And the first step for success is to do something about the sectarian violence in Baghdad so they can have breathing space in order to do the political work necessary to assure the different factions in Baghdad, factions that are recovering from years of tyranny, that there is a hopeful future for them and their families. I would call that political breathing space.”
Press Conference by the President, February 14, 2007, Washington, DC
“These troops are all aimed at helping the Iraqi government find the breathing space necessary to do what the people want them to do, and that is to reconcile and move forward with a government of and by and for the Iraqi people.”
President George W. Bush delivers a statement on the War in Iraq during a visit Monday, April 23, 2007, by Gen. David Petraeus, Commander of the Multinational Force-Iraq, to the White House
Well, there we have it. We give them some security and the Iraq government goes on vacation for a month. Ryan Crocker today admitted the dysfunctionality of the central government. Meanwhile, the GAO report on Iraq’s progress is dismal (even after desperate attempts to slant the report from the White House) and we’ve determined that the Iraqi National Police are hopelessly corrupt, untrusted by the majority off the populace (certainly the Sunnis), and dysfunctional. The citizens of Baghdad, long used to continual electricity before the occupation, still don’t average more than 6 hours of electric power a day... Oh, and our Army and Marines are nearly at the breaking point. Wonderful.
This was the Administration that told us the Mission was Accomplished. They told us the resistance was in its last throes. Food for thought.
So now, aided by a fully inept and dispirited Congress, the war plods on, giving Bush time to pass off the ball to the next sucker and ultimately leaving America with two choices: leaving behind chaos or more years of lost billions and needless American deaths. That’s a hell of a choice.
