Earlier in the week I wrote that it seemed to me that many boosters of the war have made General David Petraeus into some sort of magic general who, if we would just stick with him, will lead us to victory in Iraq. Specifically I noted a Charles Krauthammer column and an Ed Morrissey post. James Joyner also noted what he called “Petraeus Fetishism.”
Bush has the good fortune of having finally found his Ulysses S. Grant, or his Creighton Abrams, in Gen. David H. Petraeus. If the president stands with Petraeus and progress continues on the ground, Bush will be able to prevent a sellout in Washington. And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators.
Now, I do think that Petraeus was a good appointment and I further believe that if we had engaged in many of the anti-insurgent policies he is currently using years ago, we would probably be in better shape in Iraq. However, an improving security situation in Diyala and Anbar are not enough to proclaim that we are on the road to victory. (And, to be honest, the boosters of the current direction really haven’t defined what “victory” means in any practical sense).
The notion that one general is enough to fix this situation is grasping at straws.
A major problem with this line of thinking is that it conflates The Surge (Anbar, or whatever) with the overall policy. There is still the overarching problem of state construction and the major problem of finding a way for the various sectarian factions to work together in a civil political manner. If I thought that a slight increase in security would lead to substantial improvement in these areas, I would be less pessimistic about The Surge and similar policy initiatives. If we had been better prepared to secure the country right after the invasion, then perhaps we would be in a position to see more successful state construction at this stage. Instead we allowed the security situation ti spiral out of control and now we are trying to fix that mistake–and it seems to me that it is far too late to accomplish this task.
Even if The Surge establishes higher levels of security, are we really any closer to solving the more major problems in Iraq? And if the only way to stop full blown sectarian civil war in Iraq is an ongoing Surge, then the administration needs to tell the public that we are going to be there for another decade at least under the current policy direction.
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