Petraeus Ex Machina (editorial)

[BrianS]

Petraeus Ex Machina (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/arianna-huffington/petraeus-ex-machina_b_46866.html)

General David Petraeus went to Capitol Hill Wednesday to brief Congress behind closed doors on the progress of the surge. No word on whether he walked across the Potomac to get there.

But given the glowing terms increasingly desperate Republicans have been using to describe him, I'm sure they wouldn't have been surprised if he had.

He's been lauded as, among other things, "an expert on counter-insurgency" (President Bush), "a determined, resourceful and bold commander" (John McCain), "a superb officer, one of the finest I've ever known" (Dick Cheney), "a student of counterinsurgency warfare" (Orrin Hatch), and "Bush's Grant" (Lindsay Graham).


His name has become a verbal trump card. As soon as you mention Petraeus, it's game over. Why continue talking? He's a one-man cavalry, riding to the rescue armed with a Princeton PhD and a successful stint in Mosul. The pro-war crowd's olive drab savior -- able to confer military absolution on America's greatest foreign policy disaster with the wave of his hand.


These bold pronouncements -- and attendant irrational expectations -- are almost always buttressed by the fact that, as we have been told again and again, "General Petraeus literally wrote the book on counterinsurgency." Literally.


Which he did, spending the last year overseeing the preparation of FM 3-24, the Army's newly-revised counterinsurgency field manual.


The trouble is, most of those touting his authorship have clearly never read his magnum opus. Or perhaps they have, didn't like the plotline, and decided to ignore or alter the contents to fit their political agenda. (This, of course, is standard operating procedure for the Bushies. Just this week, the president suggested the 2006 elections offered a mandate for his policy of escalating the war on Iraq, and Dick Cheney used the findings of the Iraq Study Group to slam Harry Reid, conveniently skipping over the fact that the ISG recommended a troop withdrawal timetable similar to the Democrats'.)


Now they are willfully ignoring Petraeus' blueprint for success -- and acting like they are following it to a tee. His newly-minted counterinsurgency approach calls for a ratio of 25 soldiers per 1,000 residents -- which would require 120,000 soldiers to provide the proper security for Baghdad, and roughly three times that amount for all of Iraq. But let's just focus on the 120,000 soldiers that, according to the manual written by Petraeus -- "the expert on counterinsurgency," remember? -- are needed to secure Baghdad. Simply put: we're not even close to that number. And never will be. Even after all of the planned 21,500 additional troops are sent to the embattled capitol, there will still only be 85,000 security forces there -- and that includes significant numbers of Iraqi security forces, whose readiness and loyalty have repeatedly proven to be unreliable at best.


So Petraeus says it will take 120,000 soldiers to succeed. Instead, he's being asked to do it on the cheap -- and pretend that he's getting what he needs. And this is just in terms of troops. Petraeus' manual also says that a muscular military presence is just 20 percent of what is needed for a counterinsurgency effort to succeed -- the other 80 consists of establishing political and economic reform, two areas in which the United States is also failing miserably.


Despite this, Petraeus, to his eternal discredit, is going along with the charade -- probably crossing his fingers behind his back -- and promising to let us know how it's really going sometime this summer. But we don't need to wait until sometime this summer. We can see the news, and count the bodies, and know for ourselves that this is all just another case of prolonging the inevitable, of asking more young men and women to die for a lost cause. For the first time since the war began, we've just had five straight months with 80 or more U.S. fatalities.


In ancient Greek dramas, an apparently insoluble crisis was sometimes resolved by the intervention of a god, brought on stage by an elaborate piece of equipment. This contrived resolution was known as a deus ex machina ("god from a machine").


In this present insoluble crisis, defenders of the war like to imagine Gen. Petraeus flying in on a giant Blackhawk suddenly transforming chaos into order. A Petraeus ex machina.


But this is no ancient Greek drama. It is an all-too-real American tragedy. And the sooner the White House stops waiting for a play-acting god to intervene, the sooner we can do the right thing and bring our troops home.

[BrianS]

Petraeus: Iraq Needs Enormous Commitment (http://apnews1.iwon.com//article/20070427/D8OOJVHG1.html)

The U.S. military commander in Iraq says the war effort may well get harder before it gets easier and American casualties are likely to continue to climb.

Speaking as the Senate was passing legislation to start bringing home U.S. forces in October, Gen. David Petraeus said the war will require "an enormous commitment" by the United States.

And he said that while some sectarian killings have dropped by two-thirds in recent months, the overall level of violence in Iraq has remained largely the same.

Petraeus also gave new details on what he called "exceedingly unhelpful activities" by Iran, including links to a terrorist cell that planned and carried out the abduction and murder of five U.S. soldiers in Karbala in January.

He said U.S. troops found a 22-page document on a computer during a raid last month that outlined details of that Jan. 20 sneak attack on the provincial headquarters in Karbala. Brothers Qais al-Khazaali and Laith al-Khazaali were detained in connection with the attack.

Petraeus said the Khazaali network "is directly connected to the Iranian Quds Force, received money, training, arms, ammunition and at some points in time even advice and assistance and direction."

However, he said there is no direct evidence yet that Iranians were involved specifically in the Karbala incident.

In an hourlong, wide-ranging discussion of conditions in Iraq, Petraeus called the war "the most complex and challenging I have ever seen."

And he painted a somber picture of the coming months, even as members of Congress decried the war as a failed mission and promised to continue a push to set benchmarks for progress and a timetable to begin pulling U.S. troops out.

"I think there is the very real possibility that there's going to be more combat action and that, therefore, there could be more casualties," Petraeus said. "When you're expanding your forces' presence, when you are going into areas that have been very lightly populated with coalition forces in the past, that there is going to be more action."

The four-star general, picked by President Bush to oversee the recent buildup of American forces, also cited some progress in the two months since the troop increase began. He said sectarian killings have declined - aided by construction of walls around some neighborhoods - while a number of markets are reviving, amusement parks are busy and some Iraqis are returning to their homes.

"I am well aware that the sense of gradual progress and achievement we feel on the ground in many areas in Iraq is often eclipsed by the sensational attacks that overshadow our daily accomplishments," Petraeus said, conceding there is "vastly more work to be done across the board."

While he would not predict troops levels into the fall or comment directly on the legislation Congress passed Thursday, his comments made clear that his war plan did not include a significant reduction of U.S. forces anytime soon.

"This effort may get harder before it gets easier," said Petraeus, calling the situation "exceedingly complex and very tough."

Asked how many troops he thought would have to remain in Iraq - and for how long - to finish the job, Petraeus said, "I wouldn't try to truly anticipate what level might be some years down the road." However, he noted historical precedents to long U.S. peacekeeping missions.

"It is an endeavor that clearly is going to require enormous commitment and commitment over time," he said, adding that he didn't want to predict how many troops might be involved or when.

Acknowledging the divide between Congress and the administration, Petraeus said the Washington clock on the war is moving rapidly, reflecting public frustration and impatience. But the Baghdad clock is moving slower - prompting Pentagon and administration officials to press the Iraqi government to pick up speed on political reconciliation and other improvements.

He said he gave a memo to Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, on Wednesday, outlining how the U.S. should measure progress in Iraq in the coming months. Commanders have said they will give Defense Secretary Robert Gates an assessment on the military buildup in early September.

Petraeus said the draft proposes evaluating four areas: security, economics, politics and governance, and the rule of law. The specifics, he said, include progress by the Iraqi security forces, how well the Iraqi government is spending its budget on capital improvements and construction, whether banks are reopening, progress on key legislation, and development of the justice system and detention facilities.

Despite the disappointing pace, Petraeus said he believes Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other leaders "are committed to achieving more in this area in the months ahead." He said the fledgling government faces difficult hurdles as it struggles to pull together Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish leaders into a national unity effort.

On a positive note, he cited improving conditions in the turbulent Anbar province in western Iraq, noting it had been "assessed as lost six months ago."