Petraeus: Won't use the Word "Victory" For Iraq

Obama not meeting with Petraeus on an aerial tour of Baghdad on July 21, 2008.


Photo: AP/SSG Lorie Jewell

Gen. Dave Petraeus is easing out of his job as Commander of the Multi-National Force-Iraq. His new role as commander of CENTCOM, boss of Iraq and other theatres, is traditionally called 'fire-proof,' meaning you can speak your mind. And speak he has, to the BBC, as quoted below.

But he's not the only General leaning back over the line of honesty and away from PR fairy tale. Bob Woodward's new book, The War Within, (60 Minutes' vid + transcript) collects the words and feelings of many Generals and puts the lie to the continued insistence that a) the surge is a "success" and b) Bush listens to his commanders on the ground and in the Pentagon's E-Ring. Who did he listen to? Think tank idealists and armchair warriors like Fred Kagan who get their academic chops at Yale, Harvard, American Enterprise Institute, etc--exactly those Ivy League and other elitist institutions we're supposed to laugh at.

Woodward's Generals didn't want the surge, not because they didn't think a handful of troopers on every street corner of Baghdad wouldn't quell violence. A cop on every corner in East LA would have the same effect. Their problem with the surge was that its previous definition of "success" (victory was never even seriously considered as a term) was this: Iraqis would grow up and get along and get on with the business of sustained self-governance. Hasn't happened. In places we aren't positioned, bombings and barbarism born of centuries-old grudges continue. And the Iraqi government adjourns, yet again last week, with no progress toward, yes, "success."

"Success" was a guaranteee that, as Petraeus himself notes, no General in his right mind could stand behind and none really wanted to underwrite with yet more over-extended tours of duty. As Woodward's reporting suggests, the surge was a desperately needed political solution all right, but for one man and one party, Bush and the GOP.

The surge, like so much of national security these last years, was a game; a deck stacked against common sense and doable strategy and stacked for fantastical thinking and mindless chants of "USA! F*ck yeah!" And that latter mindset is still what we get from the RNC and from McCain himself. That mindset, without the cusswords and testosterone, is really one of looking for grace, for some kind of righteous justification for past actions that the facts just refuse to provide.

It really is numbing for anyone with a many-generations-long family history of military commitment like mine, UK and US, because it forces people of honor and intelligence to choose sides based not on keen insight and experience, not based on their trade-craft, but instead on the artificially and politically recalibrated definition of Patriotism™. No matter what McCain says, this environment of fear, uncertainty and doubt is an almost impenetrable wall to change he says he's about. But when 80% of America agrees that we're on the wrong track in domestic and foreign policies, and you've been driving the Presidential and Congressional bus lo these last 8 or more years no amount of common sense and dispassionate presentation is going to get you off the hook.

Makes sense, right? Yes, but of those 80% how many were among the 90% supporting Bush at his high point? How many thought Colin Powell's UN presentation was a no-brainer, a hit out of the park? Even he didn't think so. How many loved the rush of "Shock and Awe," and swelled with pride that the MOAB (Mother-of-all-bombs) was our invention, dammit -- "USA! F*ck yeah!"

And that about expreses the seriousness of Mayor Rudy's national security cred. The guy who built his Emergency Command Bunker in the World Trade Center, the 1993 bullseye of America-hating terrorists, worries in a Broadway whisper that Obama didn't mention "victory" in Iraq. Palin said it too.

"This is a man who can give an entire speech about the wars America is fighting, and never use the word `victory' except when he's talking about his own campaign."

What's Petraeus himself say?

Q: Do you think you will ever use the word "victory"?

Petraeus: I don't know that I will. I think that all of us at different times have recognized the need for real restraint in our assessments, in our pronouncements, if you will. And we have tried to be very brutally honest and forthright in what we have provided to Congress, to the press, and to ourselves....

This is not the sort of struggle where you take a hill, plant the flag and go home to a victory parade...it's not war with a simple slogan.

Gee. In the non-meeting with Petraeus, it sounds like two men had a serious and realistic conversation and maybe, just maybe, somebody asked: "Is "victory possible?" And the answer was, "No, not in the standard sense. Returning home with honor and letting the Iraqis get on with it? Certainly." Who knows, but based on Petraeus' and Obama's words it seems neither was or is trying to fool the other, or the public, and each understands beyond cliche that "these grave and serious times" we live in offer no pleasing Hollywood ending. Not for professional Republicans.

No doubt, Giuliani, Palin and crew will fawningly defer to Petraeus' candor and obvious seriousness. But Obama will still be "wrong," and the surge will still be a "success." This has to be so; far too many deferred "journeys of personal discovery" demand it.