Reflections on Petraeus’ Testimony
First: two impressions watching General Petraeus opening statement before the House on September 10, 2007:
1 – Virtually the only people we have been fighting in Iraq are Al Qaeda.
2 – Not only can we see light at the end of the tunnel, but a successful resolution is just around the corner. Hang in there. Morning in Iraq!
Now, if confronted with these impressions, do I expect General Petraeus would confirm they represent the reality in Iraq? No, of course not! Nevertheless, that is the impression he provided by the sheer weight and the general tenor of the statements he made. Were there demurrals that specifically undercut those impressions? Yes, of course - for no one could seriously make those two cases above. But one question becomes, why did I derive those impressions? Why did the Petraeus’ opening statement – as a whole – convey these impressions? Perhaps I was the only one who reacted in that way, but I am inclined to doubt it. It is clear, of course, that those impressions serve the purpose of the Bush administration to ‘play for October/November’, i.e. get to a point where we are committed to Iraq along the lines the administration would like us to be until the end of this administration.
I watched almost all of the House committee questioning and did not see much of any consequence.
Representative Wexler [D]from California was the most directly confrontational - theatrical, but not very useful.
A Representative from New York raised the question of Petraeus’ previous statements on the situation in Iraq, pointing out they were optimistic and later shown to be seriously wrong. Petraeus offered that he stood by his contentions, but that the bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samara in February of 2006 threw everything out the door, initiating a wave of sectarian violence. The inference from that would be that things justifying his optimism were on track between the time in July of 2004 (a Washington Post Op-Ed), and statements to visiting Senators in the summer of 2005 (Senator Boxer in the 9/11/07 Patraeus/Crocker Senate hearings), all the way until February of 2006.
Does anyone believe this?
Thomas Ricks, much traveled and experienced in Iraq, offered in a live Washington Post blog accompanying the testimony:
“His [Patraeus’] comment goes to an interesting aspect of the narrative many in the U.S. military are developing, that everything was going pretty well in 2005 and early 2006, until a low-level civil war broke out. I have a hard time with that. I remember knocking around Baghdad in January 2006 and being shocked at how bad security was in the city, and how out of touch the U.S. military was with that fact.”
The most potential blood could have been drawn by a question from Representative Loretta Sanchez [D] California. She raised the issue of a recent ABC/BBC/NHK poll on Iraqi attitudes: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/10/AR2007091000528_pf.html
The poll shows very considerable Iraqi discontent/disillusionment with the surge. They feel they are less safe, and that the overall situation has deteriorated since the inception of the surge. Representative Sanchez, however, did not leave it there. She quoted the new army Counterinsurgency manual back to Petraeus – who superintended its preparation. The manual explicitly seeks to dramatically expand understandings of what the nature and extent of the military role in counterinsurgency should be. It specifically proposes that ‘the people are the prize’: the security of the people becomes the tactical objective of counterinsurgency military engagement. If that is so, how can anyone propose the surge is succeeding in its military objective, given that the people believe themselves to be less safe and to be experiencing deteriorating conditions? Unfortunately (or fortunately?) for Petraeus, time ran out before he got a chance to answer.
Perhaps the best perspective I have seen on the reality on the ground comes from a featured article in last Sunday’s (September 9, 2007) New York Times. It is a neighborhood by neighborhood assessment of Baghdad: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?_r=2&;oref=slogin&oref=slogin
Print only version of the above:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/09/world/middleeast/09surge.html?_r=2&;oref=slogin&pagewanted=print
Key excerpt:
“General Petraeus has focused on “tactical momentum,” citing the so-called Sunni awakening as proof of success and cause for a continued and expansive American investment of lives and money.
But a close look at three kinds of neighborhoods — Sunni, Shiite and mixed — indicates that while there is certainly momentum, it is still largely driven by the sectarian forces in Iraq, and moving according to their rules.”
Fighting in Iraq:
a - It’s against Al Qaeda and Islamic Radicalism.
b - It is over the presence of an occupying, alien (non-Muslim) force.
c- It’s Sunni/Shia sectarian conflict.
d - It’s over the division of spoils in an oil rich country.
e - All of the above.
Obviously ‘e’, all of the above.
And America is stuck in the middle of all of this.
Nevertheless, the Sunni/Shia sectarian division is closest to the heart of the matter. It is something the administration was well aware of before it went in [see Cheney circa 1993/94], and signally failed to prepare for. This was from the start a Sunni/Shia conflict before it was anything else. It was the reason the Sunni Arabs of Anbar provided a nascent insurgency a substantive base to work from. How exactly Petraeus could have been in Iraq during 2003 – 2005 and proceed on the basis that sectarian division was not a principle concern beggars belief. Yet that was apparently the case. He had responsibility for the training of Iraqi forces in that time frame, and represented that things were ‘looking good’ and ‘on track’ as late as the summer of 2005. At the same time he failed to systematically address the utterly critical matter of the real (and deep) allegiances of the forces he was training up. To assert, as he has in his testimony, that the dramatic upsurge in Sunni/Shia internecine conflict – with Al Qaeda acting as an accelerant - was somehow an unanticipated event that disrupted ‘smooth’ progress in Iraq cannot convince. An inflammatory role played by Al Qaeda has been obvious from the beginning. His assertion, instead, either underlines a significant deficiency in his understanding, or represents dissembling before the Congress in a critical moment in his country’s history.
Dare we wonder what he (and we!) may be missing in Petraeus’ assurances now that the surge is working, and we are on a path to ‘success’?
Further considerations (added September 17, 2007):
Any government, Iraqi or any other, must be able to establish and maintain civil peace/civil order.
The administration, and the testimony of General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker, cleave to the idea civil order must be achieved before political reconciliation will occur. In Iraq, at this time, that will require a force willing and able to fight and die to hold civil peace/civil order in place for a reconciled, and (theoretically) united Iraqi government.
General Jones and his commission see things in a critically different light. The concluding paragraph of the Jones report contains this:
“At the end of the day, however, the future of Iraq and the prospects for establishing a professional, effective, and loyal military and police service, hinges on the ability of the Iraqi people and the government to begin the process of achieving national reconciliation and to ending sectarian violence.”
Jones elsewhere has repeatedly affirmed that preparation of the Iraqi security forces can proceed only so far without political reconciliation. In order to get those security forces to where they have to be, substantive political resolution must be achieved.
This brings us to Catch 22.
Mere political reconciliation is not enough. What the Iraqi people will have to see is a couple of years, at a minimum, where the political reconciliation holds, and is equitably providing a decent life for Iraqis.
Then, and only then, is there any likelihood that the Iraqi security forces will be able to find enough young men who are willing to fight and die for this 'new' Iraq.
You can’t get the security forces you need with out enduring political reconciliation, and you can’t establish any enduring reality without those forces.
In other words, you can’t get there from here.
Catch 22
Meanwhile,
You might check out this article by George Packer in this week’s New Yorker:
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/09/17/070917fa_fact_packer
bleak indeed
Wrap up: September 25, 2007
What Petraeus SHOULD have said:
We have presented evidence for trends in positive directions in a number of key areas since the surge began. Nearly all of this is associated with Sunni Iraq and not with Iraq’s dominant Shia polity. With this overriding reality in mind, I must further emphasize that by far the principle driver for what progress has been realized was the dramatic change in position by leaders of the Iraqi Sunni population. That critical transformation came before the surge was even announced. The surge clearly aided what has occurred over the past nine months, helping our forces to make the most of a largely unanticipated development, but without the change in position by Iraqi Sunnis, little of what I have reported here as ‘progress’ could have been achieved.
It becomes, therefore, critical to what I recommend that we carefully consider the factors behind this historic shift by Sunni Iraqi leaders. I judge it happened for a variety reasons, but two stand out. The first is an increasing anger within their own communities over aggressive, even brutal, Al Qaeda attempts to impose a rigid fundamentalist Islam. The second is the likelihood that support of the insurgency by Sunni Iraq was determined to hold little of value for Sunnis as the current situation evolves, and that cooperation with Americans - and assistance from them - would serve the Sunni cause better, at least for the moment. In short, this change in position by Sunni Iraqis is perilous, at once hopeful and dangerous.
The second reason proposed clearly the harbors the dangers of augmented sectarian division. We will be making one side stronger in an impending all out civil war. The other reasons I suspect may be at work in this transformation are of a more narrow and parochial nature, but also tend towards division.
The first reason I proposed, however, does open a door for a larger Sunni, Shia and Kurd reconciliation. That alone holds hopes for a ‘new’ Iraq in accord with our interests, and with the interests and hopes - I believe even now – of most Iraqis. By suppressing Al Qaeda in Iraq within Sunni areas it is possible that sufficient civil peace will be realized to allow all of the constructive efforts so desperately needed to move forward. In Anbar - large, geographically well defined, and 99% Sunni - these constructive efforts should be easier, even much easier, to achieve. But in more demographically complex, largely urban areas, especially Baghdad, we cannot expect so ‘easy’ a path. Nevertheless, the current Iraqi governance must move with urgency and dispatch to try to achieve reconciliation. If it fails, we all fail.
I recommend, therefore, that we continue pursuit of this Sunni opening for a while longer, but I do not believe the chances for success can be considered very good. Minority Sunni Iraq, not the majority Shia, become the principal focus for our efforts. It is a devil’s bargain, with less hope for success than we would like to see. Accepting the losses in life and treasure our persistence will entail become advisable only given the grave possibilities for further, less mediated, devolution in Iraq’s situation.
The efforts of our armed forces must be accompanied by the very determined application of whatever pressures we can devise to push the current Iraqi governance along the path of political reconciliation. To fail to do so, as has been, in my judgment, largely the case till now, breaks faith with our soldiers, who have already sacrificed so much. In this effort serious exploration of the effects of troop drawdowns should not be arbitrarily ruled out. At the same time, pursuing the diplomatic initiatives recommended by the Iraq Study Group should be attended to with levels of commitment and effort sorely missing so far. If these efforts do not accompany the continued exploration of the opening the Sunni turnaround has provided, there will be no basis for proceeding further. At long last we must give substance to the understanding that the military alone cannot solve the situation in Iraq. If the administration does not turn itself around sharply in these political and diplomatic endeavors now, we must begin active consideration of how to contain the effects of a tragic and dangerous reality.
8:44:17 PM 
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