- While Obama is often portrayed as a political neophyte
finding himself confronting situations that are way over his head, his
choice of General David H. Petraeus to replace General Stanley A. McChrystal
was in some ways a masterful political stroke, though it does not seem
to have achieved all that might have been intended.
-
- Obama's move has nothing to do with any effort to maintain
a "winning" strategy in Afghanistan. No realistic person could
even conceive of how the US could "win" in Afghanistan. In fact,
it would not seem that the central purpose of Obama's escalation of the
US war in Afghanistan in 2009 had to do with "winning," either,
since unlike his political predecessor, Obama actually gives the appearance
of knowing what is going on. Rather, Obama's purpose is fundamentally
a political one: preventing, or at least limiting, political damage from
the war in Afghanistan.
-
- Obama sees the political need to maneuver between
the positions of the war hawks and the advocates of peace with whom he
largely agrees. Political considerations largely determine how Obama acts
regarding Afghanistan, and about almost everything else he does. (All successful
US politicians generally act in that manner.) If he were to base his action
on his personal view of the merits of the issue, it seems likely that
Obama would opt for peace and pull the troops out of Afghanistan. As antiwar
critic Sheldon Richman writes in his article "Endless Occupation?"
(June 29, 2010): "Obama presumably would like to get out - he can't
be thrilled about presiding over America's longest war - but the cross-currents
may leave him no choice but to tread water. The military wants to 'win,'
whatever that means, while the Right is ready to pounce on Obama as an
appeaser of terrorists if he acknowledges the reality of this inglorious
war. (Al-Qaeda has moved on.)"
-
- http://counterpunch.org/richman06292010.html
-
- Obama's right-wing critics constantly characterize his
foreign policy as one of weakness, and it is this notion that Obama goes
all out to dispel, fearing that, if this view caught on among the general
public, it would do significant political harm to him among the moderate
swing voters, upon whose support he must rely. On the other hand, peace
voters will continue to support Obama even if he differs with their position
at times, because the Republicans advocate a harder-line war position,
and voting for a pro-peace minor party is generally considered a wasted
vote.
-
-
-
- Thus in the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama held that
it was necessary to more vigorously prosecute the war in Afghanistan to
offset his reference to Iraq as the wrong war, showing that he was not
averse to using military force per se. And in his escalation of the
war in Afghanistan, Obama seemed to be choosing a much safer target for
his demonstration of strength than the war hawks' desired war on Iran.
-
- Just as Obama intensified the war in Afghanistan to
protect his own political image, the purpose of his replacement of McChrystal
by Petraeus is also to serve his political interests. The publicity given
to the bombshell article in the magazine "Rolling Stone" on McChrystal
and his staff, with their derogatory remarks about members of the Obama
administration, placed the president on the horns of a dilemma. If he
did nothing, allowing McChrystal to remain as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan,
the media would likely imply that he was weak and indecisive and thus incapable
of leading the military.
-
- However, if Obama dismissed McChrystal, a noted expert
in counterinsurgency warfare, he would have been castigated for removing
the best man for the job in order to salve his own pride. As conditions
deteriorated further in Afghanistan, as they are most likely to do, it
would be Obama, not McChrystal's replacement, who would bear the brunt
of the blame.
-
- The choice of Petraeus as McChrystal's replacement was,
or at least seemed at the time, a stroke of pure genius that solved this
dilemma. Petraeus, who will step down from his higher position as commander
of CENTCOM (United States Central Command), was the only possible replacement
who would not seem to be less capable than McChrystal. For Petraeus is
widely credited for solving what is generally regarded as a similar problematic
situation in Iraq with the surge and is the author of the military's current
counterinsurgency doctrine.
-
- Now those few who have actually studied the situation
in Iraq know that there has not been a real solution. The rationale for
the surge was that improved security would provide the opportunity for
the central government in Iraq to work for national reconciliation among
the major factions-Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites. This clearly did not take
place. What the surge actually achieved was temporary pacification-in large
part due to the bribing of Sunni sheiks to stop their attacks. Serious
ethnic and religious tensions remain, which are apt to explode at any time,
and the level of actual violence has recently been on the upswing.
-
- In choosing Petraeus, Obama also may have also thought
he had found a way to derail a serious political rival. Petraeus has looked
like a possible contender in the 2012 election. By sending him to Afghanistan,
Obama has made his candidacy more difficult. In the words of commentator
Tunku Varadarajan:
-
- "Obama has, at a stroke, taken Petraeus out of the
2012 presidential race."
-
- Varadarajan continues: "Keep your friends
close-and the competition closer. There has been a buzz about Petraeus
and the presidency since about the fall of last year, and to many in the
Republican Party-a party bereft of ideas and credible leaders-the general
has increasingly taken on the aspect of a possible messiah. His impeccable
military credentials, his undoubted intelligence, his mastery of personal
and professional politics . . . plus his undoubted (if carefully tailored)
conservatism have led many to see in him a man who can take on Obama in
2012, and beat him. He is even the sort of guy who'd allow the GOP to broaden
its tent, drawing in 'undecideds' and independents."
-
- "Obama's 2012 Power Play,"
-
- http://tinyurl.com/29yj9dv
-
- It should be noted that Petraeus has support from both
the Republican Right--especially the neoconservatives--and from the general
public. For the neocons, Petraeus serves as a replacement for John McCain.
Petraeus was the recipient of the neoconservative American Enterprise
Institute's highest honor for 2010, the Irving Kristol Award. There was
a statement in a military document attributed to Petraeus that held that
Israel's actions were exacerbating American casualties in the Middle East,
but neocon stalwart Max Boot absolved Petraeus of any criticism of Israel
in this instance.
-
- See Boot, "A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel,"
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/boot/260876
-
- As Petraeus' recently revealed email correspondence indicates,
the general had close ties to Boot, whom he relied upon to maintain a
good relationship with pro-Israeli Jewish Americans. In an email to Boot,
written after the publication of Petraeus' alleged statement about the
negative impact of Israel on US forces, Petraeus asked: "Does it
help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters
last Sun night? And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary
of the liberation of the concentration camps." Boot, acting as if
he understood the collective mind of the American Jewish community, assured
Petraeus that this additional obeisance was unnecessary. It must be stressed
that this correspondence indicated that Petraeus' has not only close ties
to a neocon journalist but also high political aspirations; and that he
perceives the pro-Israel American Jewish community to be very powerful
politically.
-
- Philip Weiss, "Petraeus emails show general scheming
with journalist to get out pro-Israel storyline," http://tinyurl.com/2dvpb2o
-
- While Petraeus is close to neocons, his political strength
stems from the fact that, like Dwight D. Eisenhower, he is seen to be
above partisan politics, as political commentator Peter Beinart has pointed
out in his article, "Petraeus for President?"
-
- http://tinyurl.com/26mrt6w
-
- The Senate's unanimous vote on June 30, 2010, to confirm
Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan illustrates
his widespread support, which transcends political ideology. This broad
appeal distinguishes Petraeus from leading Republican political figures
such as Sarah Palin, who have strong appeal on the Right, but little support,
and much opposition, beyond this ideological segment.
-
- But if Petraeus wanted to run for President, why didn't
he just refuse Obama's offer to command the troops in Afghanistan and
say that there was more pressing work to be done at CENTCOM? In the military
hierarchy, going from CENTCOM commander, where Petraeus oversaw American
forces throughout much of the broader Middle East region, to Afghan Theater
commander was technically a demotion. But the war in Afghanistan is the
major military issue at this time. And Petraeus' heroic image makes him
appear as far and away the best man for the job. If he rejected such an
offer, Petraeus would seem more interested in his own career than in the
good of his country. Such a refusal would undermine his image as a self-sacrificing
patriot, and his presidential chances would be severely harmed, if not
ruined.
-
- Now, if everything goes according to form, Petraeus
is going to be too occupied in Afghanistan to be able to engage in the
public self-promotion that would be necessary to facilitate his run for
the presidency. And if the situation in Afghanistan fails to improve dramatically,
which is most likely, Petraeus will lose the aura of a military genius,
and his political appeal will evaporate. Moreover, the military's current
counterinsurgency doctrine, of which Petraeus is the author, would be
shown to be ultimately ineffective. As the perceptive war commentators
Robert Dreyfuss and Tom Engelhardt observe: "Afghanistan is the place
where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN [counterinsurgency]
theory isn't dead yet, it's utterly failed so far to prove itself. The
vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of Marjah in Helmand province
has unraveled. The offensive into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban
and a seething tangle of tribal and religious factions, once touted as
the potential turning point of the entire war, has been postponed indefinitely.
After nine years, the Pentagon has little to show for its efforts, except
ever rising casualties and money spent."
-
- "The President Chooses the Guru," June 28,
2010 http://original.antiwar.com/engelhardt/2010/06/27/the-president-chooses-the-guru/
-
- Obama, on the other hand, would come out of the Afghan
misadventure in the best political shape possible, since it could be said
that he did all that was possible to snatch victory out of the jaws of
defeat.
-
- See Ditz, "Awash With Fictional 'Success,' Deployment
Sets Petraeus Up for a Big Fall"
-
- http://tinyurl.com/29rwwe8
-
- In short, Obama has sent Petraeus out to fail, thus tarnishing
the general's image of invincibility and also discrediting the war in
Afghanistan. For having provided the proponents of military victory in
Afghanistan with additional troops, resources, and now the Napoleon of
counterinsurgency, Obama has given them more than enough rope to hang
themselves. At the point it became apparent to the great majority of the
American people that the US could not achieve victory in Afghanistan, despite
the most strenuous efforts, the ever-cautious Obama would see that it had
become politically safe to declare the war militarily unwinnable and seek
some type of diplomatic solution. That is probably something he has wanted
to do all along but feared doing when it was still possible that a substantial
proportion of the public would blame him for losing Afghanistan. At least,
that is how everything would work out if things went according to form.
-
- Unfortunately for Obama, in Petraeus he is dealing with
a very politically savvy individual, who knows above all else how to protect
his own image. Petraeus is simply too crafty to fall into this trap.
Just as he was smart enough to make the surge in Iraq appear like a great
success, he is showing himself to be making every effort to avoid the
possibility of taking the blame for any failure in Afghanistan.. In his
confirmation hearing, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee
not to expect any success soon in Afghanistan. Commentator Jason Ditz
writes that "the general seems to be determined to downplay any hopes
of a quick turnaround or even a long-term turnaround of the disastrous
war."
-
- http://tinyurl.com/2g46lcv
-
- In his prepared remarks for the committee, Petraeus stated:
"My sense is that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may
get more intense in the next few months." http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100629/pl_nm/us_afghanistan_usa_6
-
- Although Petraeus professed support for Obama's policy
in Afghanistan, which includes the July 2011 troop-withdrawal timeline,
he essentially says that there is not going to be much, if any, progress
by that date and if the United States wants to win it will have to maintain
substantial forces there for the long term. While Petraeus is too careful
to explicitly attack Obama's July 2011 timeline, his view on the war is
rendering it meaningless. He has stated that "It's important to note
that July 2011 will be the beginning of a process ... not the date by which
we head for the exits and turn off the lights."
-
- http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0610/39205.html#ixzz0sTzCVENL
-
- Petraeus did not specifically state when the United States
should exit Afghanistan or even what progress would look like. Consequently,
there will be no way to blame Petraeus for failure in Afghanistan because
he has not defined success. In short, Petraeus provided a masterful demonstration
of the bureaucratic art of pre-emptive CYA.
-
- Now Petraeus has certainly protected himself from any
possible blame but we can wonder why members of the Congress should ever
support such an undefined mission, which would be somewhat like Congress
providing billions of dollars to fund a NASA manned mission to Mars without
the head of NASA specifically saying when and if the red planet would
ever be reached.
-
- In the U.S. Senate's whirlwind confirmation of Petraeus
as commander of US forces in Afghanistan, no member of the self-styled
"World's Greatest Deliberative Body" was able to transition
from Petraeus' testimony to question the whole purpose of the Afghan war.
If there are no concrete benchmarks or an exit date, what is the purpose
for the US being there? And how can it be determined whether the US effort
is worth it?
-
- Members of the US Senate Armed Services committee should
have bombarded Petraeus with these questions at his confirmation hearing,
and not allowed him to get away with his nebulous descriptions. And there
should have been discussion of these broad issues on the floor of the
US Senate before the final confirmation vote. But none of this was done.
The members of the Senate were too much in awe of Petraeus' great stature,
and too fearful that anything they said might be interpreted as harsh questioning
of the highly esteemed military leader, which could do them political harm.
As national security specialist Winslow T. Wheeler observes in his aptly
titled article, "General Petraeus and His Senate Vassals": "Basically
it was a hearing chaired by General Petraeus and attended by politicians
supplicating him to offer any response he might care to, preferably blessing
the 'questioner' with either praise or agreement. It wasn't oversight;
it was bad theater."
-
- http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler06252010.html
-
- So Obama is in no better position than he was before
the McChrystal affair. As the war drags on interminably, it is Obama,
not Petraeus, who will be held responsible. If he were a real leader, Obama
would be willing to take the political risk for his decision on the matter
of war, but he is unwilling to do this. General Petraeus, on the other
hand, remains in a position to grab the presidency in 2012, if Obama's
standing in the polls does not improve.
-
- ________________________________________________________________________
-
- http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/25/awash-with-fictional
-success-deployment-sets-petraeus-up-for-a-big-fall/print/
-
- http://tinyurl.com/29rwwe8
-
- Awash With Fictional 'Success,' Deployment Sets Petraeus
Up for a Big Fall
-
- Posted By Jason Ditz On June 25, 2010 @ 7:34 pm In Uncategorized
| No Comments
-
- It may seem hard to believe at this point, but it wasn't
so many years ago that Gen. David Petraeus was in very much the same position
as Gen. Stanley McChrystal found himself in. The public face of President
Bush's failing war in Iraq, Petraeus' popularity was plummeting, and his
future was very much in doubt.
-
- By a stroke of good luck, Gen. Petraeus found himself
credited with "winning" the war in Iraq not through anything
he did, but rather because his disastrous tenure was so bloody and had
driven so many Iraqis from their homes that the secularly split neighborhoods
had all but been emptied out and, predictably, violence dropped.
-
- It didn't end the war, of course, and after a brief lull
people started moving back to these neighborhoods, and we are seeing once
again that violence is back on the rise in Iraq. The war that Petraeus
"won," at least in the administration's eyes, is still going
on, and going badly.
-
- But this isn't about the myth of Petraeus' first victory,
an old story, but rather President Obama's selection of Petraeus as the
new face of his own primary war, in Afghanistan, where he is expected to
take largely the same strategy that didn't really work in Iraq, and replicate
the drop in violence in Afghanistan.
-
- It is not lost on many people that the war in Afghanistan
is a very different war than the one in Iraq, but the reality is that
the Obama Administration has been trying to shoe-horn the Iraq strategy
onto Afghanistan since the president took office, escalating the war over
and over and watching with endless optimism as the conflict continues to
get worse.
-
- But having gone from the failing general in Iraq to a
modern day savior of the endless warfare state, the myth of the general's
competence has landed him into the most unenviable position possible, the
commander of the Afghan War, which is steadily spiraling out of control.
-
- To make matters worse, there is no external savior for
Petraeus this time. The violence in Afghanistan isn't a side effect of
the American occupation but something fueled directly by it and aimed directly
against it. There is no ethnic or sectarian divide that, through sheer
disastrous failure, will quiet down simply for lack of immediate proximity.
-
- In fact the proximity problem has gotten worse over time,
as the US adds more troops in the areas with the most insurgents. The escalation
plan would also add Afghan forces to these areas, providing another target.
-
- While the results of the Obama Administration's strategy
so far are pretty clear, an ever worsening security situation, the plan
remains unchanged, and the hope that Petraeus can turn the situation around
with more of the same woefully misguided. The only question is how long
the situation can continue to worsen before people start to question why
the so-called Petraeus magic isn't transferring to Afghanistan.
-
- Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com
-
- URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/25/awash-with-fictional-
success-deployment-sets-petraeus-up-for-a-big-fall/
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
-
- http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2010-06-23/david-
petraeus-news-how-obama-took-a-rival-out-of-the-2012-running/
-
- http://tinyurl.com/29yj9dv
-
- Obama's 2012 Power Play
-
- by Tunku Varadarajan
-
- The Daily Beast
-
- Obama's decision to replace Gen. McChrystal with Iraq
war hero David Petraeus was more than just a way to keep the Afghan battle
on course. Tunku Varadarajan on the president's masterstroke.
-
- Barack Obama, who has in recent days turned haplessness
into an art form, played a masterstroke today, making perhaps the canniest,
wiliest, even wisest decision of his generally rudderless presidency. I
refer, of course, to his appointment of David Petraeus to the Afghan war
command, in place of the Rolling-Stoned Stanley McChrystal. In doing so,
Obama has, at a stroke, taken Petraeus out of the 2012 presidential race.
-
- Keep your friends close-and the competition closer. There
has been a buzz about Petraeus and the presidency since about the fall
of last year, and to many in the Republican Party-a party bereft of ideas
and credible leaders-the general has increasingly taken on the aspect of
a possible messiah. His impeccable military credentials, his undoubted
intelligence, his mastery of personal and professional politics (you wouldn't
catch him talking to Rolling Stone in a million years), plus his undoubted
(if carefully tailored) conservatism have led many to see in him a man
who can take on Obama in 2012, and beat him. He is even the sort of guy
who'd allow the GOP to broaden its tent, drawing in "undecideds"
and independents.
-
- This can no longer happen. And Obama's brilliant move
also preserves his own Afghan war strategy (which is effectively a Petraeus-McChrystal
strategy). So, in throwing out the "McChrystal bathwater," he
has been careful not to jettison the "policy baby."
-
- To those tempted to argue that Obama has now elevated
Petraeus to Eisenhower-like status, I'd point out that Eisenhower never
ran for office against a president who raised him up to the military apex.
I have met Petraeus, and had the chance to talk to him in an informal way,
and I would be flabbergasted if he would now contemplate a political run
against a man who has entrusted him with America's most sensitive theater
of war. Besides, the job Petraeus is taking would normally be a two-year
stint.
-
- To those tempted to argue that Obama has now elevated
Petraeus to Eisenhower-like status, I'd point out that Eisenhower never
ran for office against a president who raised him up to the military apex.
-
- So Obama has reason to be delighted with himself right
now: He has sacked a recalcitrant big-mouth; he has entrusted said big-mouth's
job to a certified hero and military star; and he's taken that star out
of contention for 2012, making his own re-election that much more likely,
given the headless turkey that is currently the GOP.
-
- Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent
and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at
Stanford's Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU's Stern Business School.
He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal. (Follow
him on Twitter here.)
-
- --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-
- Petraeus for President?
-
- by Peter Beinart
-
- October 12, 2009
-
-
- http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-10-12/
petraeus-for-president/?cid=hp:mainpromo4
-
- http://tinyurl.com/26mrt6w
-
-
- The GOP, torn apart by extremists, needs a hero to step
up and lead the party. Peter Beinart thinks General David Petraeus is a
lot like Ike.
-
- Remember last winter, when liberals were complaining
that Barack Obama had kept Bush family consigliere Robert Gates as his
secretary of Defense and named a John McCain buddy, General James Jones,
as his National Security Adviser? They're not complaining now. Today, Gates
and Jones are MoveOn's best friends, because they provide the political
cover that Obama needs to reject General Stanley McChrystal's call for
more troops in Afghanistan. Imagine if Richard Danzig was Defense secretary
and Susan Rice was NSC adviser, as many had expected. Obama would have
never dared send them out to publicly slap down McChrystal, as both Gates
and Jones have done. With liberal civilians in key posts, Obama's administration
would have appeared more dovish, which, ironically, would have made it
harder for Obama to actually do the dovish thing.
-
- But as shrewd as Obama has been about the politics of
national security, his showdown with McChrystal still offers the GOP its
best chance so far of getting up off the mat. It's worth remembering that
the last time the Republican Party was in this bad a shape, in the early
1950s, two generals helped resuscitate it. The first was Douglas MacArthur,
who in 1951 accused President Harry Truman of appeasement for scaling back
America's objectives in Korea. The confrontation cost MacArthur his job,
but it cost Truman his popularity. In the almost two years that Truman
served as president after firing MacArthur, his approval rating never reached
40 percent.
-
- It's worth remembering that the last time the Republican
Party was in this bad a shape, in the early 1950s, two generals helped
resuscitate it.
-
- There's another analogy, however, that should worry Democrats
even more: Not between General MacArthur and General McChrystal, but between
General Dwight Eisenhower and General David Petraeus. Pundits have mused
about the Eisenhower-Petraeus comparison before, but the Afghanistan slugfest
gives it new relevance. In the late Truman years, MacArthur, Joseph McCarthy,
and the rest of the Republican right wing were a bit like Sarah Palin and
Glenn Beck today. They succeeded in bloodying the Democrats and scaring
the country about overseas threats. But their overseas warmongering and
domestic radicalism made them too extreme to ever win national office themselves.
-
- Ike was different. He exploited the right's hysteria,
and yet sailed above it at the same time. He refused to condemn McCarthy,
and implied that he too believed that Truman's containment policies constituted
appeasement, but he maintained his calm, soothing tone. As a war hero who
stood apart from the partisan brawling around him, he retained a personal
brand far stronger than either party's.
-
- As personalities, the syntax-mangling Ike and the self-consciously
intellectual David Petraeus don't have much in common. But politically,
they're in a parallel position. Today's GOP has a right-wing base that
can damage Obama, but none of its favorites have a prayer of winning the
White House. The reason is that just like the Republican right of the early
1950s, which kept insisting that the New Deal constituted socialism (or
fascism), today's conservative activists have not accommodated themselves
to some basic shifts in public mood. Over the past couple of decades, the
American people have grown more pro-environment, more culturally tolerant,
and more suspicious of the unregulated free market, and yet the Republican
Party has responded with a series of litmus tests for its presidential
candidates that represent the political equivalent of sticking your fingers
in your ears and yelling "la la la, I can't hear you."
-
- _________________________
-
- http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/29/confirmed-by-senate-
petraeus-downplays-war-expectations/print/
-
- http://tinyurl.com/2cczpk3
-
- Confirmed by Senate, Petraeus Downplays War Expectations
-
- Posted By Jason Ditz On June 29, 2010 @ 4:52 pm In Uncategorized
-
- Less than one week after Gen. Stanley McChrystal was
relieved of his command over the Afghan War, his replacement Gen. David
Petraeus was confirmed by the Senate, while delivering prepared testimony
promising little in the way of changes and more violence ahead.
-
- Perhaps the most troubling prediction from Gen. Petraeus
was that the violence was going to continue to rise in the months ahead,
and with it the casualties. The death toll for NATO troops in Afghanistan
this month has by far dwarfed the previous record, and at least 99 troops
have been reported slain.
-
- Since his appointment by President Obama, Gen. Petraeus
has been touted as likely to turn the war around, despite any changes in
specific strategy. So far however, the general seems to be determined to
downplay any hopes of a quick turnaround or even a long-term turnaround
of the disastrous war.
-
- In fact over eight and a half years after the war began,
Gen. Petraeus' most optimistic comment was to say that it was "possible"
there would be some progress made at some unspecified point in the future.
Pentagon officials had previously been claiming that some undetectable
momentum changes were already being made, as they attempt to convince Congress
to pass another $33 billion in emergency funding for the conflict.
-
- Article printed from News From Antiwar.com: http://news.antiwar.com
-
- URL to article: http://news.antiwar.com/2010/06/29/confirmed-by-
senate-petraeus-downplays-war-expectations/
|
