The War Against General Petraeus

Gen Petraeus at a press briefing April 2007, US Army released photo by Robert Ward.

And no, I'm not talking about the insurgents. I'm talking about Americans. It's one thing to disagree with what the General said before Congress this week (I'll get to that later). It's another thing entirely to attack him even before he had a chance to speak, or with insults and character attacks unrelated to his testimony. This outrageous advertisement in the NY Times by Moveon.org recently brought this issue into the open, but it's been going on for some time. I wrote about this problem back in July:

At Salon.com, Glenn Greenwald portrays General David Howell Petraeus, commander of coalition forces in Iraq, as a partisan hack for the Bush administration (and Andrew Sullivan agrees). This is simply because, -gasp- he allowed himself to be interviewed by Hugh Hewitt (a conservative writer for the Weekly Standard), and because he is -double gasp- optimistic about the War in Iraq!
...
But really who has more credibility? Well, I will be happy to stack up the military experience of Glenn Greenwald, and Andrew Sullivan against General Petraeus any day... Exposing pseudo-experts like these is one of the reasons why I created this blog in the first place...

But there is pleny of recent partisan sniping as well. We've seen it all before.

From the normal:

Gen. David Petraeus went before a deeply divided Congress on Monday, the commander of 165,000 troops heckled and attacked by anti-war critics before he began to speak.

"Tell the truth, general," shouted protesters as the four-star general made his way into the crowded hearing room.

To the baseless:

The General Lies...Once again, we have a general repeatedly promising to save Western civilization by turning the corner in yet another intractable and unnecessary foreign war.

To the asinine:

here is my prediction for how the Congressional testimony will go:

1.) Petraeus will enter the room, and Joe Lieberman and several other moderate Democrats will faint when they see him in Class A’s with lots of ribbons and medals.

To the outright bold-faced lie:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the [Petraeus's] report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government.

But there is still some sanity in the world. While they didn't forcefully criticize it, several Democratic senators distanced themselves from the Moveon.org ad. John Kerry called it "over the top". In fact, it was so offensive, even some Moveon supporters and the far left were criticizing it. In a Diary at the Daily Kos:

I've been a Moveon member for several years and have supported them financially and otherwise through a number of controversies where they were unjustly attacked. Today's ad in the NY Times was completely wrongheaded and stupid as strategy for ending the war.

One thing war protesters should have learned from Vietnam was not to attack the troops for following misguided orders. That being said, if a military man were to put himself in a position where he has been blatantly lying and obfuscating to the American people time and again, then it would be appropriate to call him out. This is not the case with Patraeus, who can be guarded and mindful of who he reports to, but has not demonstrated a tendency towards "betrayal" of trust.

But of course, DailyKos is the land of absolute hatred, so the above moment of sanity was a bit too much:

Actually, attacking the messenger is exactly the right thing to do in this case.

The Bush administration only ever achieves credibility by standing on the backs of "messengers", and is quick to discard them once they are proven to be no more than shills for the administration.

I will not second guess Patraeus' military experience, but he has long since whored himself out as a political tool, and the White House is attempting to cloak that fact in said military experience.

Incidentally, it's worth noting that Moveon.org ran the ad at nearly 2/3rds off the normal price. Apparently someone at the NYT really, really liked it.

If that isn't enough, look at this photo:

Morons like this are another reason why I created this web site.





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