The General's Moment

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 11, 2007 10:08 AM

When David Petraeus finally got to speak--after nearly an hour of congressional bloviation and a catastrophic failure to get the microphones to work--he did not provide a terribly mixed report.

After stressing that he was speaking for himself--meaning not as a pawn of the White House spin machine--the general was remarkably optimistic, considering that a majority of the country thinks Iraq is an unmitigated mess.

With color-coded charts, he went into rat-a-tat-tat mode: The surge's objectives are largely being met. The number of deaths is down. Iraqi forces are shouldering more of the load. More tribes are rejecting al-Qaeda. And the headline-grabber: He wants American forces cut to pre-surge levels by next summer.

Yes, Petraeus conceded, the war was "complex, difficult and sometimes downright frustrating." But he didn't sound that frustrated, speaking of "battlefield geometry" and all that. And he stuck it to the antiwar side, saying a "premature drawdown" would "likely have devastating consequences."

If you're pro-administration, you seize on the upbeat progress report and the notion that some troops (since President Bush has vowed to embrace Petraeus's findings) could be coming home.

If you're anti-administration, you wonder how an 18-month surge of 30,000 troops that simply returns U.S. forces to previous levels can be regarded as anything other than buying time for a continued morass.

"The talk in Washington on Monday was all about troop reductions," says the L.A. Times, "yet it also brought into sharp focus President Bush's plans to end his term with a strong U.S. military presence in Iraq, and to leave tough decisions about ending the unpopular war to his successor. . . . The plans also would allow Bush to live up to his pledge to the defining mission of his presidency, and perhaps to improve his chances for a decent legacy. He can say he left office pursuing a strategy that was having at least some success in suppressing violence, a claim that some historians may view sympathetically."

The Boston Globe says the testimony was blunter than some expected:

"Army General David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker yesterday gave Americans something that many say they've been yearning for: a straight, sober, and nuanced presentation of the situation in Iraq.

"The two officials' air of sincerity and competence probably put to rest the notion, advanced by some liberal groups, that they would parrot the agenda of the Bush administration.

"But the upshot of their congressional testimony - the US military mission is achieving its aims but still has no clear end, and the long nation-building process will be, in Crocker's words, 'slow, uneven, punctuated by setbacks as well as achievements'- may still be a shock to those Americans who expected that the troop 'surge' would foster a quicker political solution."

I don't know: It still seemed strikingly upbeat to me in a glass-half-full way.

The New York Post is more impressed:

"Calm and unflinching, the four-star U.S. commander in Iraq impressed even hard-core war critics in Congress yesterday, announcing that some troops can begin coming home this month, 30,000 can return by next summer, and even more joyous reunions are on the horizon."

But in some ways, the battle is just beginning:

"Even as Gen. David Petraeus told Congress he expects to withdraw a Marine contingent from battle this month and about 30,000 more troops by next summer," says the Chicago Tribune, "skeptical Democratic leaders set the stage Monday for more furious debate over the war by planning votes as early as next week to pull troops out much faster."

With all the focus on American public opinion, what about the people whose country we're supposedly saving?

"Barely a quarter of Iraqis say their security has improved in the past six months, a negative assessment of the surge in U.S. forces that reflects worsening public attitudes across a range of measures, even as authorities report some progress curtailing violence.

"Apart from a few scattered gains, a new national survey by ABC News, the BBC and the Japanese broadcaster NHK finds deepening dissatisfaction with conditions in Iraq, lower ratings for the national government and growing rejection of the U.S. role there."

Will anything change as a result of this week's proceedings? Not a chance, says HuffPost's Marty Kaplan:

"Magical September will make Republicans no less likely to wag their lapdog tails at the White House, or to rattle their cut-and-run sabers at the Democrats, than will Magical March, the probable next location of the turning-point mirage. Democrats, for their part, will seize on the possible January withdrawal of one brigade of the surge as a bipartisan triumph, and their fear of being branded anti-troop and pro-terrorist by a bunch of chickenhawk demagogues will lead them to hail a non-binding non-deadline nonconditional footnote to the next defense appropriation as though they had drawn some heroic line in the sand."

In the continuing debate over how we got here, Slate's Fred Kaplan can't believe that one mystery remains unresolved:

"It was a move that put 250,000 young Iraqi men out of a job, out on the streets, angry, and armed--and all but guaranteed the violent chaos to come.

"In Robert Draper's new book, Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush (which was excerpted in Slate), Bush blamed L. Paul Bremer, who was head of the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority during the occupation's first year, for the decision . . .

"After this exchange was reported in the New York Times, Bremer fought back. He gave the Times two letters from that period: one in which Bremer told Bush what he was doing; and a reply in which Bush patted Bremer on the back for doing a good job. The former envoy also wrote a Times op-ed piece in which he claimed that a) he was only following orders from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; b) top officials and officers in the Pentagon and the White House had approved the move; c) disbanding the Iraqi army was a good idea; and d) there was really no Iraqi army left to disband anyway.

"It is a stunning fact that--despite the massive library of in-depth books, tell-all memoirs, and investigative articles about every tactical decision regarding this war--we do not yet know who made this key strategic decision.

"Bremer is right about one thing: It wasn't him. Though he wouldn't be so self-demeaning as to admit it, he was a mere errand boy on this point."

The Dems, of course, are coming under growing pressure from the left, which National Review's Byron York dissects:

"With its full-page 'General Betray Us?' ad in the New York Times, MoveOn.org has once again put itself at the forefront of the antiwar movement. And if past patterns are any guide, a number of Democrats are embarrassed, and even angered, by MoveOn's actions but are afraid to reveal the true extent of their feelings. MoveOn simply has too much fundraising clout -- and a fear-inducing inclination to attack Democrats who stray from the MoveOn line -- for many in the party to take it on . . .

"The thing that should trouble party leaders is not that MoveOn is capable of silly stunts. It's not even that MoveOn is capable of making slanderous comments about U.S. military officials. And it's not that MoveOn is against the war in Iraq, which polls show many Americans believe was a mistake. Rather, MoveOn's latest campaign is a continuation of a drive to oppose not just the action in Iraq, but the war on terror in general, and, in a larger sense, America's use of military power in its own defense."

Citing top MoveOn official Eli Pariser, York says: "Not long after the 2004 elections, Pariser famously said of Democrats, 'Now it's our party. We bought it, we own it, and we're going to take it back.' The next few days could be crucial in determining whether he was right or not."

But should the opposition be limited to a "movement"? At American Prospect, Courtney Martin tackles this question:

"How do you measure a public's responsibility to end war?

"I sat drinking beers among family friends on a recent Sunday evening, discussing just this topic with a group of people hailing from both coasts and many places in between, spanning political persuasions from loyal Republican to anarchist, and at all stages of life, from a recent widow to a puppy in love. We were boomers and echoes of the boom, the moneyed and the starving artists. And we were all totally stumped as to what our responsibilities as citizens were in a war, that -- regardless of party affiliation or tax bracket -- we all agreed was a colossal failure.

"Why haven't we been more outraged? And if we have, why hasn't it manifested in desperate action?"

On the campaign front, I notice that Fred Thompson is having trouble making the sale to his natural allies on the right. David Frum pronounces Fred's bid "sort of empty. Fred Thompson's candidacy invites comparisons to Ronald Reagan's. Both actors, both older men, both easy and natural presences. But Reagan had a clear vision of what he wanted to do as president. If Thompson has it, he is not sharing it.

"Thompson has excellent reasons for his studied vagueness. Thompson is positioning himself as the most generic Republican in the race, the candidate acceptable to all factions of the party. Rudy Giuliani has defied party orthodoxy on abortion, guns and other social issues. Mitt Romney's healthcare reforms in Massachusetts have been sharply condemned by the Wall Street Journal editorial page and employer organizations. John McCain has more enemies inside the GOP than he does outside. Thompson by contrast has alienated no important party constituency -- and as often as not, avoiding enemies is the safest and surest route to the top. But if Thompson is the candidate best able to unite the Republican party, he is also the candidate least able to reach beyond it. If no Republican has any strong reason to vote against him, no non-Republican has any strong reason to vote for him."

Is Thompson soporific? Andrew Sullivan brands him "Valium Fred":

"People like Fred Thompson. So far as I can tell, that is currently the prime rationale for his candidacy for president of the United States . . .

"Thompson is accused of being lazy. So was Ronald Reagan, of course. But there is a key difference between the Reagan of 1979 and the Thompson of 2007. Reagan had spent a lifetime honing arguments, finessing policy, articulating a broad philosophical view, while proposing concrete and radical policy options.

Thompson has a legislative record as a senator from Tennessee that is all but invisible. Yes, he has a solid conservative record on taxes and other people's spending. But he was a hog for his home-state pork barrel projects. He was, in other words, a popular backbencher -- but no more . . .

"A thinker he isn't. He's rather a conveyor of mood. In a period of less moment, when less is at stake, this might be an aesthetic preference: a calm presence in a storm. But on the substance of war, and foreign policy, the Thompson shtick can seem somewhat detached from the needs of the moment."

Rudy is hardly a hero to the right, either, as we see in this Power Line post by Paul Mirengoff:

"Giuliani, of course, has a right to be proud of his record as mayor of New York. And it makes sense that this record would be the centerpiece of his campaign for president. But there are several problems with constantly bragging in the first person about his tenure as mayor.

"First, when a candidate keeps hitting the same note over and over, people quickly tire of hearing it. Moreover, it makes the candidate an easy target for ridicule.

"Second, by talking so much about New York, Rudy is playing into the stereotype of New Yorkers as people who think that the rest of the country is basically a suburb of that city. That's not a stereotype that's likely to enhance Giuliani's popularity in places like New Hampshire, where voters like to hear about themselves and their state . . .

"Third, voters don't like non-stop bragging."

The Democrats faced off in a (translated) Spanish-language debate on Univision Sunday night, drawing ridicule from Betsy's Page:

"Clinton touts her campaign manager's ethnic origin as if what Hispanics in this country are truly concerned about is token members of a person's campaign rather than real action. Praising Cesar Chavez [as Obama did] does nothing about Hispanic issues today just as praising Martin Luther King says nothing about what a candidate would do today about issues facing blacks. But, as usual, John Edwards goes the lowest. He somehow thinks that it reflects positively on him that his former hometown is now half Latino.

"Hmmm, I wonder how non-Latinos feel about his pride in an American town becoming now half Latino. Is Edwards touting this as a desired goal? I wonder how that message plays in the Other America in the Appalachian towns Edwards was visiting this summer. None of these three statements really have anything to do with the real issues facing Hispanic Americans, issues that the Univision reporters also asked them about. They're just throwaway lines in the panderfest that such debates invite."