A Few Words on Iraq and The Crocker/Petraeus Show

I tried listening to Petraeus and Crocker's testimony - I really did. The television was in the other room while I worked on the computer. Which is why I missed out on who was talking and asking questions. All I heard was a drone of white noise from our top general in Iraq and our ambassador to Iraq.

Since then I have heard and read a bunch of news and commentary on their testimony. I think Dick Cavett nailed the problem with listening to Crocker and Petraeus in his piece Memo to Petraeus & Crocker: More Laughs, Please

It’s like listening to someone speaking a language you only partly know. And who’s being paid by the syllable. You miss a lot. I guess a guy bearing up under such a chestload of hardware — and pretty ribbons in a variety of decorator colors — can’t be expected to speak like ordinary mortals, for example you and me. He should try once saying — instead of “ongoing process of high level engagements” — maybe something in colloquial English? Like: “fights” or “meetings” (or whatever the hell it’s supposed to mean).

David Broder's The Question Petraeus Can't Answer brings in an Indiana connection that keeps me thinking that Petraeus talks a lot but says little (if anything) that makes sense:

According to those premises, Lugar said, the questions before Congress and the country are much different now from those being asked when the surge strategy was launched. "Today," he said, "the questions are whether and how improvements in security can be converted into political gains that can stabilize Iraq, despite the impending drawdown of United States troops.

"Simply appealing for more time to make progress is insufficient. Debate over how much progress we have made and whether we can make more is less illuminating than determining whether the administration has a definable political strategy that recognizes the time limitations that we face and seeks a realistic outcome designed to protect American vital interests."

In response, during the hearings, Petraeus told Lugar, "We've got to continue. We have our teeth into the jugular, and we need to keep it there."

I keep thinking of the story about the monkey who finds a nut in a hole, reaches in to get the nut, but finds he cannot remove his hand and the nut at the same time. For General Petraeus, it is not a nut but a jugular.

I admit to presuming the worst. General Petraeus' job - as with many military men - depends on how he does his job and I think they think their job is beating an intangible movement that is bound together only by their dislike of us. They have the mindset that if we get out, then that is a defeat. He is wrong that it is a defeat - or not an important one. What is the difference between the American surrender of the Philippines and the Japanese signing the treaty on the USS Missouri?

Here is what the American military government cannot do: give Iraq a functioning government. If they could, then withdrawing from Iraq would be a grievous defeat. Other means exist for us to promote an Iraqi government that provides its citizens with the means their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness. Alas, those other means will not be traveling to Capitol Hill asking for billions of billions in budget requests.

Jim Hoagland's column in today's Washington Post, War at the Pentagon, gives me worries that our Iraq strategy has more to do with the Pentagon's budget strategy.