The House Tosses Softballs to Gen. PetraeusSix hours of largely predictable, pro forma testimony.
Posted Monday, Sept. 10, 2007, at 7:19 PM ET
Maybe Tuesday will be Congress' good news day.
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StumbleUponMonday was mainly a disgrace. Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker made their eagerly awaited appearances before a joint hearing of the House armed services and House foreign affairs committees to report on the status of war and politics in Iraq. The former's chairman, Rep. Ike Skelton, D-Mo., heralded it as "maybe the most important hearing of the year."
Instead, Petraeus' testimony was predictable, Crocker's was almost pathetically strained, and the legislators' questions were by and large weak-kneed, even by House standards.
Tomorrow's hearings, before the Senate armed services and foreign relations committees (separately, not jointly), will probably prove more interesting, if just because several presidential candidates sit on the panels.
The House hearing started out promisingly. Skelton said the two witnesses "must answer the question: Why should we continue sending our young men and women to fight and die if the Iraqis don't make the tough decisions?" But then he never asked them that question.
It was a pro forma session. All involved had their say. There was nearly no intellectual tussling or back-and-forth, very little real discussion of policy, strategy, or tactics. (Only a few of the junior members, whose turn came toward the end of the hearing, even broached such matters as whether there even is, or soon will be, an Iraqi nation, thus raising the question of just what is the war's political goal.)
Gen. Petraeus elaborated on his earlier claims of "tactical momentum" and said these improvements were sufficient to allow a reduction of U.S. troops to "pre-surge levels"—back down from 20 to 15 combat brigades—by next summer. But he did not point out—nor did any of his interrogators—that such a drawdown is inevitable, simply because, as the next five brigades pull out of Iraq, the Army and Marines simply don't have any replacements ready to go. This would be the case no matter how well or badly things have gone.
Ambassador Crocker, a seasoned and expert diplomat, showed a stiff upper lip, trying to put forth an impression of progress without lying about anything.
"It is possible for the United States to secure its goals in Iraq," he testified (making no effort to disguise the italics). "I do believe that Iraqi leaders have the will" to reconcile sectarian conflicts in a unified government, he said, "though it will take longer" than he'd like to see. "Most Iraqis genuinely accept Iraq as a multi-ethnic, multi-sectarian society," he asserted, then added, "It is the balance of power that has yet to be worked out." Oh, is that all?
The point of the surge, as Gen. Petraeus has often said, is to improve security in Baghdad in order to give Iraq's political leaders the "breathing room" to reconcile, pass key legislation, and create a unified government. So far, they've done nothing tangible toward that end. "Why," Skelton asked, "should we expect the next six months to be any different?"
Crocker answered, with salutary frankness, "I am frustrated every day I spend in Iraq. … Iraqis themselves are frustrated. … They are capable of coming together and thrashing out serious issues." But in the next six months? "I frankly do not expect that we will see rapid progress."
How long will it take? Neither Petraeus nor Crocker could say. Petraeus put up a chart showing the coming drawdown of U.S. forces—and a relaxation of the military mission, from main actor in counterinsurgency to mere supporter of improved Iraqi security forces. The graph showed specific dates up to next summer, when five brigades will be withdrawn—but beyond that, there were only question marks.
It would, he said, be premature to recommend "the pace of redeployment" beyond next summer. It is not time, he added, to scale back the scope of U.S. strategy. He noted that some have recommended dropping the counterinsurgency mission—protecting the Iraqi population from sectarian violence—and focusing just on going after terrorists and training Iraqi forces. But Petraeus said we need to keep pursuing all three goals.
As Crocker put it, "Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse."
I wasn't at the hearing. Like most people, I watched it on television. But a pall of paralysis and gloom seemed to drape the room. Nobody could have been surprised by the questions or answers. Nobody could have been satisfied by what anyone said. The situation is indisputably grim. Nobody seems to know what to do about it.
At the start of the hearing, Skelton referred to Petraeus as "the right person—three years too late and 250,000 troops too short." Later on, Petraeus was asked if he had enough troops to do his job. He replied, "I have what we have—what the military could have." Which didn't answer the question. Nobody pressed the issue. What was the point? The horrendous mistakes of the past are too obvious. Petraeus and Crocker had nothing to do with those mistakes. Nor will they have anything to do with the decisions that get us out of, or suck us deeper into, this war. That's beyond their pay grade. They're doing their jobs; they're doing them as well as can be expected. The crucial questions need to be addressed elsewhere—and won't be dealt with until after the 2008 election.
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Remarks from the Fray:
Don't you find it more than a bit hypocritical for a member of the current Congress, whose main concerns these days seem to be crooked land deals and pork spending projects and cruising for gay sex in airport bathrooms and with Congressional Pages to condemn Iraqi legislators, who daily risk their lives to do their job, for not making "tough decisions"? Good God that doesn't even pass the giggle test.
I will listen to a braying jackass in Congress tell me about Iraqis needing to make "tough decisions" when Congress does something about the impending Social Security and Medicare bankruptcy or actually makes a tough choice and stops stealing for a moment to balance the budget. Give me a break.
--Jckluge
(To reply, click here.)
During the questioning, Rep. Tom Lantos brought up the idea of a "diplomatic surge" to match the military surge as a means to bring about political reconciliation. This seems as important an idea as the surge itself, since the whole point of increasing security was to get the Iraqi politicians talking and thus ensure that our army's efforts would last.
In my mind, this should be the key phrase for the rest of 2007. If the surge is actually making the progress that Petraeus claims, we may as well try our hand at bringing the politicians together more forcefully. We can leverage our position as the guarantor of the Sunni's security, the Kurd's relative independence and the Shiite's ascendancy in the negotiations.
The constitution needs reform, an oil law needs to be passed, Militias need to be disbanded, and power sharing\representation deals need to be hashed out and concluded. So its time for Bush to authorize crocker to break out the biggest sticks and carrots in his bag, pull our allies like Saudi Arabia, France or the UN to the table, and Diplomatic Surge the crap out of the political situation.
--jwschmidt
(To reply, click here.)
So you were disappointed that the questioning of General Petraeus was 'softballed' yesterday. Possibly you might consider that the 'Screaming Eagle' on his shoulder, plus the Ranger badge pinned above enough fruit salad to fill up a football lineman might be intimidating and an indication that the gentleman before them, who is addressing how the war is progressing, might just know a little more about it than the questioners. The fact that he was voted in without a single dissenting vote to the task on which he was reporting might also be a factor. The fact that his total time in Iraq- outside the fairyland Green zone- exceeds the combined amount of all his Inquisitors yesterday AND today by several orders of magnitude might also be in play.
I have learned to respect the majority opinion of the 'boots on the ground' in most situations. With the modern technology of the web, that opinion is available from scores of sources on a daily basis. I'm sure liberals could scrounge around and find a few who have 'been there, done that' in Iraq that would debate the good General's testimony; for every one of those, I'm sure a dozen others would support Petraeus as giving an accurate assessment.
None of this speaks to the advisability of continuing this effort, only the current situation and the strategic plans for the short-term. Contesting Petraeus on this is not only disingenuous, but politically stupid. The continuance of the strategic direction is an executive function, while the funding necessary is a legislative function; that is how our government is constituted, something that is frustrating liberals to no end. If this was about principle and not political power, the Democrats in Congress would have cut off funding long ago, would they not? They DO hold the majority, do they not?
--Mike O
(To reply, click here.)
Yesterday, Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, provided much-anticipated testimony before Congress regarding the progress of the so-called "Surge" in Iraq. That testimony left Democrats deeply dissatisfied and anti-war activists howling in outrage.
The political group MoveOn.org led the charge. Anticipating Petraeus's testimony, they took out an ad in the New York Times that read, "General Petraeus or General Betray Us? Cooking the books for the White House." That invective provided endless fodder for Republican politicians to chew on and spit out during the hearings, rather than focusing on what Petraeus had to say.
There was one thing Petraeus accomplished - which no other commander before him has done - that causes me to believe he is less a betrayer and more a delayer. This was the announcement of his intention to immediately withdraw a two thousand-member Marine unit without replacement. This will be followed in mid-December with the departure of an Army brigade numbering thirty-five hundred to four thousand soldiers. Yet another four brigades will be withdrawn by July 2008.
Petraeus had no specific withdrawals in mind and said it would be March 2008 before he could offer any other, based on ongoing conditions in Iraq. However, has anybody really thought about what this means?
--TheBell
(To reply, click here.)
(9/14)