-Caveat Lector-
Begin forwarded message:
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: September 14, 2007 12:40:44 AM PDT
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: War Wisdom from a REAL General from a REAL War (Unlike
Salesman Betray-us)
The Ambitious Delusions of George Bush and David Petraeus
We now learn that General David Petraeus fancies himself a Dwight
Eisenhower for the 21st century
John Nichols
The Nation, Sep 13, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/thenation/20070914/cm_thenation/1232774
According to a report in London's Independent newspaper by the
reliable Middle East observer Patrick Cockburn, the U.S. military
viceroy in Iraq would like very much to return from his mission and
-- like the Supreme Commander of Allied forces in Europe during
World War II and of North Atlantic Treaty Organization in its
aftermath -- mount a bid for the White House.
Petraeus has apparently been so open in expressing his "long-term
interest in running for the US presidency" that Sabah Khadim, a
former senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry who worked
closely with the general in Baghdad, recalls, "I asked him if he
was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too
soon'."
Such are the political calculations of the man whose embrace of
President Bush's war has become so complete that he and his aides
have radically altered the manner in which statistics are gathered
on violence in Iraq in order to foster the fantasy that the fight
has taken a turn for the better.
"General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man
of great ambition <as well as being an "ass-kissing little
chickenshit," the private tendencies which usually accompany that
public trait>. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent
failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White
House in the presidential election in 2012," explains Cockburn.
"His able defense of the 'surge' in US troop numbers in Iraq as a
success before Congress this week has made him the best-known
soldier in America. An articulate, intelligent and energetic man,
he has always shown skill in managing the media."
The problem, of course, is that Petraeus's "open interest in the
presidency" might, Cockburn suggests, "lead critics to suggest that
his own political ambitions have influenced him in putting an
optimistic gloss on the US military position in Iraq "
It is Petraeus's willingness to apply the optimistic gloss that
marks him as a worthy successor to George Bush, who in Thursday
night speech to the nation pronounced himself well and truly
pleased with his general's recitation of the administration's
talking points. Based on general's testimony, Bush is claiming
"success in meeting (our) objectives."
The president's "return on success" is an empty promise that a
small number of troops already scheduled for withdrawal from Iraq
may, in fact, be withdrawn. At the same time, however, Bush
acknowledges that this "success will require U.S. political,
economic, and security engagement that extends beyond my Presidency."
Translation: For all the window-dressing talk about drawing down
troop levels, Bush continues to peddle the same " stay-the-course"
message that has been his theme since the occupation of oil-rich
Iraq went awry more than four years ago. And, once more, the
president is asking Congress to provide him with more money for
more war.
All that has changed is that the president now has a medal-
bejeweled general who is willing to gloss over the failure the
naked emperor so desperately seeks to define as "success."
Bush and Petraeus have joined their ambitions -- one for a
presidency that is not summed up by the word "failed," one for a
presidency of his own.
Ambition is, unfortunately, the wet nurse of delusion -- a delusion
so severe that Bush has seldom hesitated to compare his meandering
"war on terror" with the fight against fascism.
For their own reasons, the president and Petraeus feel they can
afford to maintain the war until they figure out how to rearrange
the letters of the word "quagmire" to spell "victory."
That will not happen. Bush's will be a failed presidency. And
Petraeus's will be not be a presidency at all.
Unfortunately, on the way to their shared fate, the commander-in-
chief and his general will preside over thousands of additional
American deaths, tens of thousands of additional Iraqi deaths, the
continued collapse of this country's global reputation and the
emptying from our treasury of the resources that might have made
America and the world more secure, more functional and more humane.
Petraeus may fancy himself a latter-day Eisenhower. But he has
shown none of the wisdom of the man who, recognizing the folly of
turning the Cold War into a hot fight, campaigned for the
presidency in 1952 on a promise to end the bloodshed on the Korean
Peninsula -- and, when elected, did so quickly and honorably.
To those who suggested in 1953 that it was necessary to wage an
endless ground and air war against Chinese communists who were
portrayed as being every bit as diabolical as the targets of the
"war on terror," Eisenhower responded, "Every gun that is made,
every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final
sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are
cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money
alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its
scientists, the hopes of its children. [...] This is not a way of
life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is
humanity hanging on a cross of iron."
Six years later, as he was finishing a presidency that had, for the
most part, maintained the peace, Eisenhower counseled against
paying too much heed to the pleading of generals and politicians
for new fights.
"I like to believe that people in the long run are going to do more
to promote peace than our governments," Ike told British Prime
Minister Harold Macmillan. "Indeed, I think that people want peace
so much that one of these days governments had better get out of
the way and let them have it."
And where do the people stand after weeks of propagandizing by the
president and his Petraeus with regard to the war to which they
have attached their ambitions?
A new poll of Iraqis, conducted by ABC News, Britain's BBC, and
Japan's public broadcaster NHK, finds that 70 percent of those
surveyed say they believe security has worsened in regions where
the Bush/Petraeus surge has been focused. Another 11 percent of the
people in whose name Bush claims the occupation must continue say
the buildup has had no effect.
A new poll of Americans, conducted by the Gallup organization just
prior to Petraeus's testimony, 58 percent rated the surge a
failure. Perhaps more significantly, at least for the general's
ambitions, 59 percent predicted that history would judge the whole
of Bush's preemptive war with Iraq to have been a failure.
That is a seven percent increase from a year ago, when voters were
preparing to reject the war and the war president's party at the
polls. And while the testimony of a general and the preaching of a
president may move some poll numbers temporarily, their empty words
cannot change the reality that Eisenhower was right about such
endeavors.
"All of us have heard the term 'preventative <"pre-emptive>] war'
since the earliest days of Hitler, who first proposed it," the 34th
president told a press conference in 1953. "In this day and time...
I don't believe there is such a thing; and, frankly, I wouldn't
even listen seriously to anyone that came in and talked about such
a thing."
Those are the words of a general who had the wisdom required to
assume the presidency, and of a president who had the wisdom to
serve as commander-in-chief. It is a deficit of such wisdom that
disqualifies both David Petraeus and George Bush, and that ill
serves both Iraq and America.
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