Petraeus and Crocker Back on the Hill
by Srdja Trifkovic
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On April 8, Army General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker returned to Capitol Hill to tell the Senate that security in Iraq has improved and that the government of prime minister Nouri al-Maliki was on the right track towards political reconciliation. Their testimony was broadly similar to the one last September, when they claimed that the surge was yielding positive results; and just like seven months ago, President George W. Bush plans to follow their statements with an upbeat address of his own, to be broadcast on Thursday night. The domestic political landscape has changed, however, and the situation on the ground is less encouraging.
General Petraeus opened his testimony before the Armed Service Committee by announcing that troop numbers should return to “pre-surge” levels this summer. The military should assess conditions before making further decisions, however, for which a 45-day “period of consolidation and evaluation” was needed. Either way no set withdrawal timetable was possible: Petraeus admitted he could not say how many US troops would be in Iraq at the end of the year. Describing progress as “significant but uneven” he asserted that the Iraqi military is “slowly increasing its capabilities,” and that recent military operations in Basra demonstrated that Iraqi forces could do things today that would have been impossible a year ago.
The verdict on “the recent military operations in Basra” is more ambiguous than the General would have us believe, however. Senior U.S. officers privately admit that the performance of Iraqi forces in last week’s clashes with the Mahdi Army militia (Jaish al-Mahdi, JAM) of Moqtada al-Sadr ranged from indifferent to distinctly poor. Far from proving that Maliki’s government and the Iraqi military are capable of independent, decisive action, those operations showed that, after almost five years of U.S.-supervised recruitment and training, Iraqi command and control structure is not capable of cohesive planning. A large percentage of Iraqi soldiers, and the majority of the country’s National Police, are unwilling to fight Shiite militias, with a significant minority ready to desert their units or even change sides. The most “positive spin I can put on it,” according to a senior U.S. official, is that “the Iraqi Army didn’t cut and run.”
Opening the hearings and anticipating the General’s statement, committee chairman Carl Levin warned that an “open-ended pause from July” would be an “invitation to continuing dependency.” Some of his fellow Democrats see the recent fighting in Basra as evidence that the surge was failing. “We need a strategy that will clearly shift the burden to the Iraqis, that’ll begin to take the pressure off our forces, begin to allow us to respond to other challenges in the region and worldwide,” said Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), a member of the Armed Services Committee. It remains beyond Democrats’ reach, however, to wrestle control of the war from the White House. Anti-war legislation that passes the House cannot get the 60 votes in the Senate that are needed to overcome procedural hurdles.
Leading presidential contenders, Sens. John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, sit on the two committees hearing today’s and tomorrow’s testimony. They are using the occasion to restate their position, from McCain’s “we will never surrender” and “success is within reach” to Clinton’s claim the troop buildup had failed in its stated purpose to give the Iraqi government space and time to achieve political reconciliation. McCain’s statement at the hearing could come to haunt him next November. “Success, the establishment of peaceful, democratic state, the defeat of terrorism—this success is within reach,” he said. “Congress must not choose to lose in Iraq. We must choose to succeed.”
Speaking on NBC’s Today show, Obama said that “the most important issue is still the one that was asked in September, which is how has this war made us safer and at what point do we know that there is success so we can start bringing our troops home.”
On this morning’s form, that question will likely remain unanswered after two days of testimony by Petraeus and Crocker. Five years after the fall of Saddam the Iraqi army remains unable to effectively confront, let alone defeat, insurgents and terrorists safe haven. There is no political progress to match military improvements, and those improvements are in any event uneven and transient.
The comforting news for Mr. Bush is that at the end of this week the Democrats will remain unable to muster enough Republican votes to pass legislation that would impose a withdrawal timetable. Buying all the time until the end of his mandate is meaningless in the absence of a strategy to end the war, and Mr. Bush has none. Iraq’s collapsed society is no more able today to develop institutions and mechanisms capable of bridging ethnosectarian divides than it was last September, or a year or two ago.
After Mr. Bush departs the White House, the best we can hope for is that U.S. forces can gradually disengage without appearing defeated. Devising a viable disengagement strategy, however, demands discarding the illusion that Iraq can be a “democracy” as well as an American “ally.” Iraq can be ruled as she had been ruled before March 2003, and as the bulk of the Arab world is still ruled today: as an autocracy, with occasional sham elections perhaps, but with a firm hold of the security services on the political life always. Such an Iraq could indeed be a partner of sorts, as the Hashemites in Amman and Hosni Mubarak are American partners. A “free Iraq,” on the other hand, free from an American military presence, and with the ruling political elite representative of the will of the majority of her citizens, will either disintegrate into three monolithic ethno-religious entities or become a Shiite-dominated theocracy closely allied with Iran. Neither outcome would be in the American interest, and that interest—rather than some lofty notion of “democracy”—ought to guide any future disengagement strategy.
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1 Comment by Sean Scallon on 8 April 2008:
Only a rapproachmont with both Iran and Russia can save the U.S. from strategic diaster in Iraq.
The language we use with the word “withdrawl” is pretty dubious. Any military leader will tell you to completly extract U.S. forces from Iraq will take 1-2 years considering all the resources that are over there. People say “withdrawl’ and one thinks o f soldiers throwing down their guns and running for the nearest transport. That’s not going to happen we have to be honest about this.
Once the withdrawl process begins, will be time for the Iraqis to has out their differences. At least they’ll they incentive do so which is not true right at the moment.
2 Comment by robert m. peters on 8 April 2008:
Dr. Trifkovic,
Please forgive my bringing an unrelated sidebar into your excellent thread; however, I could not resist since you begin your piece supra with with “On April 8, ….” for on April 8, 1864, just about this time of day, perhaps a tad later, General Richard Taylor leaned across his saddle and looked across a Louisiana wheat field just out of Mansfield, Louisiana, at a place called Sabine Crossroads, and ordered his army of from 8,000 to 12,000 men, arrayed in a V-formation, to advance against the emerging forward elements of General Nathanial Bank’s forty-thousand man Army of the Gulf. Thus began the Battle of Mansfield and so was the turning point in the Red River Campaign. Ultimately, the enemy would be cleared from the Red River Valley and driven back to the Isle d’Orléans, for the first time in nearly two years. It would, however, be a tactical victory. The chance, a real one, to destroy the Army of the Gulf, including 10,000 troops on loan from Sherman and to destroy or capture nearly seventy Union boats and ships was lost because of incompetence on high. Yet, in these climes, we still celebrate it. This weeked, we will once again, as we do every year, re-fight the follow-up Battle of Pleasant Hill and again drive Billy Yank, metaphorically speaking, out of the Red River Valley. Someday, perhaps, likely not in my lifetime, he and his empire will leave us forever. I hope that the occupation of Iraq does not last as long as ours has!
3 Comment by Jack Gates on 8 April 2008:
Turning of a new page… rise of the next age; meanwhile sadly (in the immediate present) groom still waiting at the altar. -approximately R.Z.
This seems hyper as indeed it is I know – I’m down home and about it being humanly slow under God (where we going?) – Except the exception to the rule which proves it gets hyper occasionally – to get it back to slowed down and appropriately human.
Especially when we forgot the occasion is indebtedness & responsibility to each other. That’s # 3 (in Fact) of Aristotle’s fourfold process of ’cause & effect’.
That’s YOU dudes that’s ME.
Right – yes – let’s not make me smack ya… by ‘me’ I mean reality. Dig it.
4 Comment by tom dav on 8 April 2008:
Awesome post on Sabine Crossroads and the driving of Yankee scum out of that area. Would to God we could have driven those bastard servants of Leviathan on the Patomic out of the South completely. But, as Lee said I think, we have appealed to the God of battles, and he has decided against us. (for now, anyway)
5 Comment by NGPM on 9 April 2008:
“Neither outcome would be in the American interest, and that interest—rather than some lofty notion of ‘democracy’—ought to guide any future disengagement strategy.”
Too late.
We on this site have been thoroughly re-educated to resist the democratic poison, but we are, sadly, alone. The rest of the “free” world has imbibed the same poison as François Bayrou, whose only political ideology is “democracy, democracy, democracy worldwide!” as though democratic elections are intrinsically the solution to every problem in the world.
I’m dying of a sniper wound and my children have no food. But…give me a ballot and we shall walk, happy and whole once more!
“Neither left nor right!” was his slogan. In other words, “No personality! I stand for NOTHING!” And that, frankly, is only a hyperbolic example of what is wrong with the entire Western elite today–an elite that has yet to be seriously threatened (except perhaps by Marxists, who are far closer in spirit to their targets of fury than they can ever admit.)
Right-wing idiots in middle America scream that we cannot pull out and allow our military to fail. If only they could see that this house built on sand is doomed to fail. So long as they don’t, men–and more disgustingly, WOMEN–will continue to perish on the front lines for our obstinate nihilism.
6 Pingback by Petraeus and Crocker Back on the Hill : Novakeo.com on 9 April 2008:
[...] http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/?p=564 Dr. Srdja Trifkovic is a regular columnist for Novakeo.com Dr. Trifkovic is Foreign Affairs Editor of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture, published by The Rockford Institute, and Director of the Institute’s Center for International Affairs. He has a BA (Hon) in international relations from the University of Sussex (UK), a BA in political science from the University of Zagreb (Croatia), and a PhD in history from the University of Southampton (UK). http://www.trifkovic.mysite.com SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Petraeus and Crocker Back on the Hill”, url: “http://novakeo.com/?p=1395″ }); Filed Under Srdja Trifkovic [...]
7 Comment by Djordje on 9 April 2008:
All this talk of ‘withdrawing ‘ and ‘disengagement’ is moot. The 4+ permanent bases, which never seem to be mentioned in any of these debates, located in remote regions of Iraq are there for a reason. The US is going to maintain a significant military presence in the region for the long term, all talk of bringing the troops ‘home’ notwithstanding.
8 Comment by Lee on 9 April 2008:
Am I the only one missing something. What democracy needs an ARMY to forge and maintain itself out of itself. Armies are for effecting sovereign theft from a neighbor, or for the enslavement of and theft from the masses by the wanna be elite. I notice that the militias don’t seem to have a problem attracting and controlling recruits. And how is it that 500,000 Iraquis can’t control a couple thousand Al-Quaeda. I don’t see Saudi Arabian or Iranian armies pouring into Iraq which would elicit a need for a defense. We will not be disengaged from Iraq and its future clones until we learn that the State is not the perfection of man. All the Yankee Puritanism in the world will not save or perfect one man.
9 Comment by Doug on 9 April 2008:
Djordje,
I think the problem is eventually going to be when the Marines in those bases start looking at their watches and grumbling about the supply convoy being late. Then the word comes that the convoy was destroyed, or came under heavy fire and had to turn back. So with food and ammo running low, the decision is made to evacuate and all the astonished Americans back home watch on CNN as the Marines sprint for the Chinooks ahead of the falling mortars and the militiamen scaling the walls.
The “surge” consists of the US paying both sides to arm themselves against each other which is keeping the peace in the same way that MAD kept the peace during the Cold War. Will this state of affairs continue indefinitely? It’s hard to see how it can with so much at stake for the group that gets to control the oil. Second question, can the US troops in the middle of this cauldron stay aloof as this multi-sided conflict takes shape around them? Again, I doubt it; you’ve got to bribe one side or the other to let the supply trucks through. You can try bribing everybody, which is what we’re doing now, but that’s inherently unsustainable too.
The whole thing is a barely-contained mess that cannot stabilize. We don’t have the money or the will to keep the lid on things, and human nature won’t allow it in any event. This is why the smartest thing the Democrats could do in 2008 is cede the election to John McCain.
10 Comment by NGPM on 9 April 2008:
“This is why the smartest thing the Democrats could do in 2008 is cede the election to John McCain.”
Well, that’s exactly what they seem to be doing, judging from the candidates they’ve put forward. Then they can have two bombs–the economy AND a lost war–to pin on two successive Republican presidents!
The prospect of knocking the GOP out of power for a full half-century is very appealing. Too bad it will be accompanied by five decades of soft-socialist hate-crimes legislation.
11 Comment by james on 9 April 2008:
Are Americans stupid for voting McCain as Republican frontrunner? I mean there apposed to massive immigration into the US, against the Iraq war and concerned about the US debt yet they vote for McCain who is the most pro immigration advocate in the senate, promised more wars specifically Iran which will be harder to pacify than Iraq and will result in a skyrocketing US debt.
12 Comment by roho on 9 April 2008:
Bla, bla, bla,bla, bla,bla………..hold the line untill McAmnesty is in office!…..Bla,bla,bla,bla………bla,bla,……..Buy us some time, bla,bla,bla. John has been briefed! Bla,bla,bla.
Fascism is around the corner and we need more time!
13 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 10 April 2008:
For my money General D. Petreaus (if that’s the right spelling), is doing the best he can under very unfavorable circumstances, but his flair, eloquence and mild-mannered approach do not smell of an assault commander of the 101st Airborne. Perhaps a sliver from his biography does hold up to the scrutiny of a typical “Senate hearing” – I don’t see much IQ present in any of the Senate hearings but that is our own fault. As the citizens of this country we have to protect it from stupidity, greed, ever-hungry power gluttons who will twist any hearing to suit their goals. The good general is doing a good job on a bad day. Last Sunday NYT edition went as far to suggest that the nation is possibly looking for an “Eisenhower type salvation” from the present nightmares.
After all a little blurb on the General offers the following:
“Petraeus was the General George C. Marshall Award winner as the top graduate of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College—class of 1983. He subsequently earned a Masters Degree in Public and International Affairs (1985) and a PhD (1987) in International Relations from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University. He later served as Assistant Professor of International Relations at the U.S. Military Academy and also completed a fellowship at Georgetown University. He has a BS from the U.S. Military Academy—class of 1974—from which he graduated as a distinguished cadet (top 5% of his class).”
No chump change in my view.
14 Comment by Thomas Miller on 11 April 2008:
Hey Ilya,
The outgoing CentCom commander Admiral Fallon reportedly told Petraeus that he is an “asskissing chickensh*t”. I think he was in a better situation to appraise the merits of the General than you or I are.
15 Comment by Anthony Flood on 11 April 2008:
Yesterday Congressman Ron Paul asked the General and the Ambassador point-blank whether in their view the President had the authority to wage war on Iran without the consent of Congress. It was a trick question, but the “professor” had the right to ask it on behalf of his employers (at least he knows for whom he works), and the “grad students” flunked their orals. Focusing on the word “Iran,” the company men responded as those who know only on which side their bread is buttered: “Sir, my job is Iraq.” That is, they reacted to Dr. Paul’s question as though to answer it required legal expertise, as though it was a who’s-in-charge-in-case-the-President’s-missing, wake-the-AG-and-the-Chief-Justice-in-the-middle-of-the-night type crisis dramatized in movies like “Air Force One” or episodes of “24.” This man, whose academic credentials so impress other commenters, at whose command lies such immense firepower, could not answer Dr. Paul’s question immediately and unambiguously in the negative. This dismayed Dr. Paul, as it did those who watch with horror and nausea as all traces of the former republic’s cocoon continue to fall away to reveal the bloody empire beneath, whose agents, lobbyists, and blogging propagandists, mentally impaired by “realpolitik” swill, snicker at those who would dare ask for the Constitutional justification of their lie-based racket, just as a garden-variety racketeer might explode at anyone who had the temerity to point out that the racketeer was jaywalking.
16 Comment by Iliya Pavlovich on 11 April 2008:
Thomas feel free to point any figure in politics (past, present or future) who has NOT been skilled in the trade you named. It just might come as a package – I can’t go beyond the obvious merits that this man has amassed at a fairly young age.