David Petraeus will be CENTCOM chief no matter who ends up in the White House. As such, I'm not surprised that, in the context of a talk at the Heritage Foundation, he's making nice towards Obama:
Petraeus also came out unambiguously in his talk at Heritage for opening communications with America’s adversaries, a position McCain is attacking Obama for endorsing. Citing his Iraq experience, Petraeus said, “You have to talk to enemies.” He added that it was necessary to have a particular goal for discussion and to perform advance work to understand the motivations of his interlocutors.It's also worth pointing out that Awakening tactics, which have seen such success in Iraq, are at heart about talking with enemies until they aren't enemies anymore.
Petraeus is difficult to read politically, and it's worth remembering that just because conservatives love him doesn't mean that the affection is reciprocated. He certainly believes that winning political opinion on the home front is key to victory in a low-intensity conflict, which is problematic for a variety of reasons, not least in that it targets the United States media for military propaganda operations. However, it's not necessarily true that Petraeus' apparent willingness to give interviews to conservative media outlets is evidence of strong right wing tendencies; these outlets were the "low hanging fruit" in the effort to build domestic support for the Surge. In any case, I don't expect that there'll be substantial conflict between Petraeus and an Obama administration.
--Robert Farley
