Petraeus shills for Bush again
General David Petraeus gave one of his patented dog-and-pony shows before the Senate Armed Services Committee today, in which he suggested that the administration's failed strategy in Iraq should be given even more time to continue failing:
Telling Congress that progress in Iraq was “fragile and reversible,” the top American commander recommended Tuesday that consideration of any new drawdowns of American troops be delayed until the fall, making it likely that little would change before Election Day.
The commander, Gen. David H. Petraeus, refused under persistent questioning from Senate Democrats to say under what conditions he would favor new troop reductions, adding that he would not take the matter up until 45 days after a current drawdown is complete in July. His recommendation would leave just under 140,000 American troops in Iraq well into the fall.
That 140,000 is 10,000 more than the number of US troops in Iraq before the failed "surge" strategy was enacted.
Petraeus also admitted that "we haven't turned any corners, we haven't seen any lights at the end of the tunnel," yet he thinks that a persistent US presence in Iraq will somehow miraculously change the dynamic of the failed five-year-old US occupation. Nothing has improved in five years of the occupation, yet we're supposed to believe that a breather of 45 days will somehow make a difference. Petraeus expects us to abstain from snickering at his tacit acknowledgment of the continuing ineptitude emanating from the Oval Office and his role as an apologist for dunces; if the drawdown of forces can be dragged out until after Bush leaves office, Petraeus seems to suggest that the (already obvious) failure of the entire Iraq enterprise can be blamed on Bush's successor.
Retired US Army General William Odom, director of the NSA during the Reagan Nightmare, disagrees with the spin coming from Petraeus.
The surge is prolonging instability, not creating the conditions for unity as the president claims.
[...]
We are being asked by the president to believe that this shift of so much power and finance to so many local chieftains is the road to political centralization. He describes the process as building the state from the bottom up.
I challenge you to press the administration's witnesses this week to explain this absurdity. Ask them to name a single historical case where power has been aggregated successfully from local strong men to a central government except through bloody violence leading to a single winner, most often a dictator.
[...]
The only sensible strategy is to withdraw rapidly but in good order. Only that step can break the paralysis now gripping US strategy in the region. The next step is to choose a new aim, regional stability, not a meaningless victory in Iraq. And progress toward that goal requires revising our policy toward Iran. If the president merely renounced his threat of regime change by force, that could prompt Iran to lessen its support to Taliban groups in Afghanistan. Iran detests the Taliban and supports them only because they will kill more Americans in Afghanistan as retaliation in event of a US attack on Iran. Iran's policy toward Iraq would also have to change radically as we withdraw. It cannot want instability there. Iraqi Shiites are Arabs, and they know that Persians look down on them. Cooperation between them has its limits.
Read that last paragraph again. Odom understands the dynamic in the region better than any exhibited by the Bush gang (he also understands it better than that idiot McCain, who once again has shown his ignorance by confusing Sunnis with Shi'ites, and al Qaeda with Iranians). Petraeus seems to disagree with Odom by suggesting that an open-ended occupation is the best solution:
Specifically, Petraeus called for a 45-day pause after the five surge brigades go home this July. After the pause will come an "evaluation" of the security situation. Then there will be an "assessment" of that evaluation. And on that basis, there will be a "determination" whether further reductions can be made, "as conditions permit."
As Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the armed services committee, noted, this sounds an awful lot like an "open-ended pause" that could "take pressure off Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their own country."
That's precisely the point Odom was making. Until we leave Iraq and force his hand, Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki will remain little more than the mayor of Baghdad, since he has the Americans to protect him. Until he and his government are forced to take responsibility for their own country, they will continue to drag their feet; meanwhile, the ongoing American occupation of the country will continue to fuel more violence. No amount of spin from the Bush White House or their apologists will change those facts.