Andrew Bacevich on our Saviour-General Petraeus

Andrew Bacevich gives his take on Saviour-General David Petraeus, that divine presence whom it would be blashphemy to criticize in any way (at least according the the Republican Party line of the day) in Sycophant Savior The American Conservative 10/08/07 issue (accessed 10/02/07).

Bacevich opens with a pragmatic account of the organizational politics that senior military leaders have to practice:

George Washington, U.S. Grant, and Dwight D. Eisenhower were all “political generals” in the very best sense of the term. Their claims to immortality rest not on their battlefield exploits - Washington actually won few battles, and Grant achieved his victories through brute force rather than finesse, while Ike hardly qualifies as a field commander at all - but on the skill they demonstrated in translating military power into political advantage. Each of these three genuinely great soldiers possessed a sophisticated appreciation for war’s political dimension.

I have my reservations about his comment on Grant's "brute force". Grant's great contribution was to recognize the central importance of destroying enemy forces as opposed to seizing territory. But that's not my focus in this post.

He contrasts that with Saviour-General Petraeus:

David Petraeus is a political general. Yet in presenting his recent assessment of the Iraq War and in describing the "way forward," Petraeus demonstrated that he is a political general of the worst kind - one who indulges in the politics of accommodation that is Washington’s bread and butter but has thereby deferred a far more urgent political imperative, namely, bringing our military policies into harmony with our political purposes.

Bacevich, who has been a genuine critic of the Iraq War from the start and who lost a son in that war earlier this year, argues that in his recent performance in Washington, "Petraeus issued everyone a pass" on doing their own jobs to make responsible decisions about the war.

Bacevich explains how Petraeus' announced plan to ramp down the number of US troops in Iraq is not consistent with his own highly questionable assessment of The Surge as having been a great success. Bacevich favorably cites the article Learning From Our Modern Wars: The Imperatives of Preparing for a Dangerous Future Military Review Sept-Oct 2007 by Army Lt. Gen. Peter Chiarelli for it discussion of what Bacevich calls "the contradiction between our military efforts in Iraq and our professed political purposes there to persist."

Bacevich focuses on how the Cheney-Bush administration's approach to the Iraq War exposes the fake nature of their "global war on terror (GWOT)".

In effect, he is allowing the president and the Congress to continue dodging the main issue, which comes down to this: if the civilian leadership wants to wage a global war on terror and if that war entails pacifying Iraq, then let’s get serious about providing what’s needed to complete the mission - starting with lots more soldiers. Rather than curtailing the ostensibly successful surge, Petraeus should broaden and deepen it. That means sending more troops to Iraq, not bringing them home. And that probably implies doubling or tripling the size of the United States Army on a crash basis.

If the civilian leadership is unwilling to provide what’s needed, then all of the talk about waging a global war on terror - talk heard not only from the president but from most of those jockeying to replace him - amounts to so much hot air. Critics who think the concept of the global war on terror is fundamentally flawed will see this as a positive development. Once we recognize the global war on terror for the fraudulent enterprise that it has become, then we can get serious about designing a strategy to address the threat that we actually face, which is not terrorism but violent Islamic radicalism. The antidote to Islamic radicalism, if there is one, won’t involve invading and occupying places like Iraq.

This defines Petraeus’s failure. Instead of obliging the president and the Congress to confront this fundamental contradiction—are we or are we not at war?—he chose instead to let them off the hook.

Bacevich concludes by offering his assessment of Saviour-General Petraus: "he has broken faith with the soldiers he commands and the Army to which he has devoted his life. He has failed his country. History will not judge him kindly."

Tags: andrew bacevich, iraq war, petraeus