It's right there in the name: "The Petraeus Report." Not "The Petraeus Report on Iraq" or the "Military Assessment of the Surge," but "The Petraeus Report." The testimonies, the white papers, the MoveOn ads, and the presidential affirmations -- none of them are about Iraq. They are about David Petraeus.
This is the White House's political strategy: Make the continuation of the war a referendum on David Petraeus, and it will continue, because he's really dreamy. Make it a referendum on the state of the country (blown up), and the status of the political reconciliation (unreconciled), and the war will inch closer to its end.
That's the nice thing about hanging your war on a Great Man of History. There are lots of men. Many of them are very good in front of television cameras. And if the war continues to fail, you can keep switching them in and out, luxuriating in a new spray of gushing newsweekly profiles every time you do.
But what's being discussed in the Senate is bigger than any one man. And David Petraeus knows that. There was a remarkable moment in yesterday's testimony, when Virginian Senator John Warner asked Petraeus whether his strategy in Iraq was making America safer. "Sir," replied Petraeus, "I believe indeed that this is the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq." Warner wasn't satisfied. "Does that make America safer?" he repeated. Petraeus, looking at this late hour tired and raw, finally faltered: "Sir, I don't know actually. I have not sat down and sorted [that] out in my own mind."
He may as well have begged, "Please, senator, I am only a man." And that he is. If David Petraeus is recusing himself from the question, "does this make America safer," then what do we care for his testimony? After all, the broader war we're fighting is not the global "War on Terror" or the surge in Iraq, but the war to make America safer. And Petraeus is advising us to look elsewhere for the answer to that question. Which makes his advice on Iraq next to useless.
The question in Iraq is not what the best pacification strategy is in an alternate universe when men are unlimited, money is no object, and the country's success is of preeminent importance, but how to balance its likely prospects of success, ceaseless chaos, and material demands in this universe. And that is a question Petraeus has said he will not answer, and indeed, has not thought about.
Others have. The Center for American Progress, in consultation with Foreign Policy magazine, recently surveyed 100 national security experts from across the political spectrum on the threats faced by the United States. Ninety one percent said the world was becoming more dangerous for America. A broad plurality said the principle reason is Iraq. The next three forces -- increasing anger in the Islamic world, misguided U.S. policies, and increasing anti-American sentiment -- all seem like different ways of saying the word "Iraq." When asked directly whether the war in Iraq has made us more or less safe, a full 80 percent said it had a "very negative" impact on our security, and another 11 percent said it had a "somewhat negative" impact. And when asked to choose what objective was most important for the United States to achieve in the next five years, only 15 percent chose stabilizing Iraq -- 30 percent chose winning the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. Few think our continued occupation advances that goal.
No wonder Petraeus didn't want to comment. But if this is a level of analysis he's unwilling to broaden out to, then his recommendations aren't worth the paper they're printed on. They are for a different conversation, one in which America has decided it must stabilize Iraq no matter the cost, no matter the commitment, no matter the likelihood of success.
In his testimony yesterday, Petraeus did what MoveOn and the Democrats could not: He showed himself to be just a man. Now Newsweek reports that those charged with thinking more broadly about American strategy, including Petraeus's superior, Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, want a far more rapid withdrawal than Petraeus is recommending. They may be right, they may be wrong. Either way, they are at least operating from the correct premise: That this is not about them, or a limited mission they've been charged with. The considerations and forces governing our conduct in Iraq are bigger than David Petraeus; bigger, even, than Iraq itself. And Congress needs advisors up to the task of considering them.
