This week is (once again) going to be Petraeus and Crocker week on Capitol Hill, with the military and civilian heads of the US occupation in regime appearing before a slew of Senate and House committees, starting Tuesday.
When they were last there, last September, the best question of all came from our (very) senior senator here in Virginia, John Warner, who asked Petraeus flat out whether the Iraq war was making America any safer.
Petraeus answered, “Sir, I don’t know exactly.”
All the senators and members of congress should make a point of asking Petraeus– and Crocker– that question once again, and probing their thinking on this issue a bit more deeply than Warner did last Septamber.
Since then, an additional 243 US service-members and thousands of Iraqis have been killed in the war; and somewhere in excess of an additional $84 billion of taxpayers’ money has been poured into the sewer of the war (that is, in good part, into the pockets of the shareholders of Halliburton, etc.)
I was struck by Petraeus’s answer at the time, thinking it seemed to reveal that they guy had some core of professional integrity. Either that, or naivete, inasmuch as he seemed unable to think fast enough to provide a fudged, more “diplomatic”, answer.
Or maybe both.
But the answer was also important because it revealed the degree to which Petraeus was indicating that he judged that the question being asked was ways above his pay-grade.
No particular surprise there, especially given that he had only received a very hastily organized promotion to four-star general just shortly before his appointment as head of the “Multi-National (!) Force– Iraq”. Prior to that, he had co-authored a handbook at the level of operational art, that is, in the waging of a counter-insurgency. But he had not operated at the level of strategic thinking required to consider questions like which counter-insurgency should one seek to win, and on what terms? Or: which counter-insurgencies are worth investing a lot in? Or: on what basis should one make a judgment like this? Or: in a time of scarce resources (such as manpower), how should one prioritize one’s commitments to the fighting of various different battles/counter-insurgencies occurring in different theaters?
(This last one is the Dannatt question, of course.)
So I was reminded of Petraeus’s painfully honest answer of last September when I read this article by Michael Abramowitz in today’s WaPo. Abramowitz was examining the high degree of importance Pres. Bush gives to receiving military advice, on a regular basis, directly from Petraeus.
He writes,
By all accounts, Petraeus’s view that a “pause” [in the drawdown of troops from Iraq] is needed this summer before troop cuts can continue has prevailed in the White House, trumping concerns by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and others that the Army’s long-term health could be threatened by the enduring presence of many combat forces in Iraq.
Abramowitz also notes the degree to which modern technology has allowed Bush to keep in much closer direct contact with Petraeus than any previous war-time president could maintain with any of their field commanders:
improved videoconferencing technology has allowed the president to communicate to an unprecedented degree with commanders on the battlefield… Bush has also held videoconferences with Casey and other previous Iraq commanders, but after Petraeus and Crocker were appointed last year, the process was institutionalized in a regular Monday morning war council between Washington and Baghdad. (A similar Afghanistan meeting takes place every two to three weeks, a White House spokesman said.)
That last detail is notable: Iraq once a week; Afghanistan, every two to three weeks. H’mmm…
Then this,
those who have witnessed the Monday videoconferences describe Petraeus as a gifted briefer who moves beyond the dry recitation of the metrics of battle — enemy killed and captured — to describe how military developments interact with political ones…
Bush, sitting in the White House Situation Room, often takes the lead on political issues, such as dealings with Iran or Iraqi politics. [Ohmigod, I have to say this is a very scary thought…] But officials said he is deferential to Petraeus on military matters. The president “sets the goals,” Gates said. “He expects the military professional to handle the mission.”
While Bush and Petraeus are said to have bonded over their love of exercise [!], administration officials describe their relationship as more professional than friendly.
So here is my concern– and it is evidently one that has been shared by many other people, including Petraeus’s superiors in the chain of command, as well as, according to Abramowitz, the chair of the senate Armed Services Committee, Carl Levin: If Bush’s main and continuing way of getting military advice about the war in Iraq is from the commander in Iraq, at what point does he get the advice he needs about the overall strategic importance of that battlefield, relative to other calls that may be made on the US military, in Afghanistan or elsewhere?
Abramowitz reports that Carl Levin said, quite correctly, that,
Bush should rely primarily on the advice of Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “Not only are they General Petraeus’s superiors,” Levin said, “but they have the broad view of our national security needs, including Afghanistan, and the risks posed by stretching the force too thin.”
He writes that Bush’s insistence on dealing directly with Petraeus, “created friction that helped spur the departure last month of Adm. William J. ‘Fox’ Fallon, who, while Petraeus’s boss as chief of U.S. Central Command, found his voice eclipsed on Iraq.”
He writes that Fallon and Petraeus, “differed over military planning and the scale and pace of the drawdown. Fallon and other top military officials have also voiced their concerns to Congress, in public testimony and behind closed doors.”
He also writes that– just as I would have expected under these circumstances– Fallon’s successor as head of Centcom, JCS Chairman Mullen, and Secdef Gates, all make a point of trying to sit in on Bush’s weekly videoconferences with Petraeus, whenever possible.
Hence, among all the other dysfunctional consequences of this bizarre arrangement, you have the spectacle of all three of these very senior links in the nation’s chain of military command having to invest considerable time and energy simply in trying to keep tabs on whatever it is that Petraeus and the Prez are cooking up between the two of them.
Abramowitz also writes this:
Some officials said Petraeus is pushing on an open door with Bush. The president has privately expressed impatience with military concerns over the health of the force, telling the Joint Chiefs that if they are worried about breaking the Army, the worst thing would be to lose in Iraq, according to people familiar with the conversations.
Ah, of course, this is why we do not need Gen. Petraeus to be a great strategist at the world level– because we have a president who is making these large-scale judgments on his own… a president who still thinks the US can “win” in Iraq, while also not suffering any catastrophic setbacks anywhere else.
Be scared. Be very scared indeed.