Petraeus clearly made the case to continue surge
Discussing the performance of British troops, Gen. David Petraeus told Sen. Joe Biden of the Foreign Relations Committee that he'd be consulting with British colleagues in London on his way back "home." He had meant to say "Iraq," where he is now on his third tour of duty. Is there any other actor in Washington's Iraq war drama who could have made such a substitution? Anyone who knows Iraq the way Petraeus does?
Asked about Shiite militia domination of southern Iraq, Petraeus patiently went through the four provinces, one by one, displaying a degree of knowledge of the local players, terrain and balance of power that no one in Washington could match.
When Biden thought he had a gotcha -- contradictions between Petraeus' report on Iraqi violence and the less favorable one by the Government Accountability Office -- Petraeus pointed out that the GAO had to cut its data-gathering five weeks short to meet reporting requirements to Congress. Since those most recent five weeks had been productive for the coalition, the GAO numbers were outdated and misleading.
For all the attempts by Democrats to discredit Petraeus, he won the congressional confrontation hands down. He demonstrated enough progress from his new counterinsurgency strategy to conclude: "I believe we have a realistic chance of achieving our objectives in Iraq."
Petraeus deflated the rush to withdrawal. First, by demonstrating territorial gains on the ground. Second, by proposing minor immediate withdrawals to be followed by liquidating the "surge" by next summer. Those withdrawals should be enough to hold wobbly Republican senators. And perhaps more importantly, the Pentagon brass.
The service chiefs no longer fight wars. That's now left to theater commanders such as Petraeus. The chiefs' job is to raise armies. Petraeus' job is to use their armies to win wars. The chiefs are reasonably concerned about the strain put on their worldwide forces by the tempo of operations in Iraq. Petraeus' withdrawal recommendations have prevented a revolt of the generals.
Petraeus' achievement is no sleight of hand. If he had not produced real demonstrable progress on the ground, his appearance before Congress would have swayed no one. His testimony, steady and forthright, bought him the time to achieve his "realistic chance" of success. Not the unified democratic Iraq we had hoped for, but a radically decentralized Iraq with enough regional autonomy to produce a tolerable stalemated coexistence between contending forces.
That's for the longer term and still problematic. In the shorter term, however, there is a realistic chance of achieving a separate success: the defeat of al-Qaida in Iraq.
Having poisoned one country and been expelled from it (Afghanistan), al-Qaida seized upon post-Saddam instability to establish itself in the heart of the Arab Middle East. Yet now, in front of all the world, Iraq's Sunnis are, to use the biblical phrase, vomiting out al-Qaida. This is a defeat and humiliation in the extreme -- an Arab Muslim population rejecting al-Qaida so violently that it allies itself in battle with the infidel.
Carrying this battle to its successful conclusion is justification enough for the surge. The turning of Sunni Iraq against al-Qaida is a signal event in the war on terror. Petraeus' plan is to be allowed to see it through.
© 2007, Washington Post Writers Group