We found the most revealing moment of the recent Congressional hearings on Iraq to have come after Senator John Warner’s question to Petraeus as to whether the strategy in Iraq was making America safer. After initially skirting the issue by sticking to his parameters in Iraq, he responded simply, “Sir, I don’t know, actually.”
And that’s our point: Petraeus is a good man who’s been given a job to do: win the war in Iraq by whatever definition he can muster. In that, he is not charged with determining whether or not US troops could be used more effectively in Afghanistan, or will soon be needed elsewhere. Whether or not overextended soldiers will just burn out, or the armed forces will simply run out of bodies. Whether the outsourced US army will be effectively taken over by private right-wing corporations like Blackwater. Whether the US reputation in the world will sink even lower. None of this is his immediate concern, and like Westmoreland in ‘Nam, he will continue to ask for as many troops and as many resources as he can get his hands on. To have expected anything else is naïve with extra-large umlauts.
No, these decisions are all in the incompetent hands of our Commander-in-Chief, who has made it clear that he will not adjust on any of them. Like the whole decision to invade, the Democrats are being played once again. The fact that the hearing took place on September 11th should tell you something: the Bushies will keep blurring that line all the way to the end. Face the facts: the war is not going anywhere until a Democrat gets into that office. Once they do, they may find it difficult to undo what they are partially responsible for.
