Soccer Dad

I voted for the general before i undermined him

In Deserting Petreaus (or here) Charles Krauthammer today hammers Senators who just a few months ago voted to confirm Gen Petraeus, and our now seeking to undermine him.

We don't yet know if this strategy will work in mixed Sunni-Shiite neighborhoods. Nor can we be certain that this cooperation between essentially Sunni tribal forces and an essentially Shiite central government can endure. But what cannot be said -- although it is now heard daily in Washington -- is that the surge, which is shorthand for Gen. David Petraeus's new counterinsurgency strategy, has failed. The tragedy is that, just as a working strategy has been found, some Republicans in the Senate have lost heart and want to pull the plug.

It is understandable that Sens. Lugar, Voinovich, Domenici, Snowe and Warner may no longer trust President Bush's judgment when he tells them to wait until Petraeus reports in September. What is not understandable is the vote of no confidence they are passing on Petraeus. These are the same senators who sent him back to Iraq by an 81 to 0 vote to institute his new counterinsurgency strategy.
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Just this week, Petraeus said that the one thing he needs more than anything else is time. To cut off Petraeus's plan just as it is beginning -- the last surge troops arrived only last month -- on the assumption that we cannot succeed is to declare Petraeus either deluded or dishonorable.

Unfortunately Senators Lugar et al. may have political survival at the forefront of their considerations, not winning the war. Of course their fleeing from their votes for Gen. Petraeus only feeds the anti-war sentiment.

Sen. McCain, who has little to gain from supporting the war, (at this point he also may have nothing to lose) though took aim at the standard bearer for retreat, the New York Times.

He said that the soldiers in Iraq he has visited "understand the purpose" of the war. "I wish I could say the same of our journalist friends in New York," he added.

McCain belittled the paper's claims that the U.S. presence was only making matters worse and denounced its call for talking to Iran, which wants to fill any "power vacuum." He said things could get "far, far worse" in Iraq, and pointed to what happened in Cambodia in the 1970s.

The worst aspect of this war on the home front has been communication. The administration has not effectively communicated the need for the war and thus the war has come to be defined by its opponents. Alas there aren't enough politicians who have done what Sen. McCain has done. If the US loses Iraq, it will be, at least in part, a failure of our political leadership. Those who are silent will be no less culpable than those who ran.

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Posted by SoccerDad at July 13, 2007 6:23 AM