4 Years Later: Petraeus In The Powell Role

By Big Tent Democrat, Section War In Iraq
Posted on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 08:33:36 AM EST
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Paul Krugman:

In February 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell, addressing the United Nations Security Council, claimed to have proof that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He did not, in fact, present any actual evidence . . . [b]ut many people in the political and media establishments swooned: they admired Mr. Powell, and because he said it, they believed it.
. . . The administration, this time relying on Gen. David Petraeus to play the Colin Powell role, has had remarkable success creating the perception that the “surge” is succeeding, even though there’s not a shred of verifiable evidence to suggest that it is.

. . . [T]he usual suspects [say], General Petraeus is a fine, upstanding officer who wouldn’t participate in a campaign of deception — apparently forgetting that they said the same thing about Mr. Powell.
. . . So here we go again. It appears that many influential people in this country have learned nothing from the last five years. And those who cannot learn from history are, indeed, doomed to repeat it.

One thing Krugman does NOT say is this - where are the Democrats? So, I will. Where are the Democrats?

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4 Years Later: Petraeus In The Powell Role | 20 comments (20 topical)

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You're not going to complement him for: (5.00 / 1) (#1)
by andgarden on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 08:52:39 AM EST

most of that coverage accepted [Pollack and O'Hanlon's] ludicrous self-description as critics of the war who have been convinced by new evidence

: Sure (5.00 / 1) (#2)
by Big Tent Democrat on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 08:54:05 AM EST

Link is there.

Operation Petraeus Propaganda (5.00 / 1) (#5)
by squeaky on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 10:10:32 AM EST

Winning hearts or "propaganda of the deed":

But Petraeus astonished even his own brain trust - composed of Rhodes scholar-warriors to a person - on Sunday when he publicly cuddled and fed a pair of baby lambs whose mother had been slaughtered in front of their eyes by al Qaeda only hours before.
Local residents were taken aback and immediately declared their devotion to the cause of bottom-up national reconciliation. "Before I thought of the Americans as my enemy," said Ralph al-Peters, a resident of X, the town where the Petraeus cuddled the cuties. "But now I realize that the American Congress must not abandon us to the lamb-slaughterers. I hope they see that the enemy of our lambs is our enemy and that al Qaeda must be defeated so there is not another 9-11 nuclear holocaust made by the Iranians."

war & piece

I was emailed this (none / 0) (#3)
by Militarytracy on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 09:11:04 AM EST

link last night because of this David Petraeus post. I was a laughing fool, particularly over Superman owns a pair of General Petraeus pajamas, General Petraeus counted to infinity - twice, when General Petraeus exercises, the machine gets stronger, General Petraeus is allowed to talk about Fight Club.

i think "swooned" is a bit of a (none / 0) (#4)
by cpinva on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 09:39:34 AM EST

stretch. gen. powell, a combat veteran of vietnam, and the primary architect of the "overwhelming force" doctrine of gulf I, was (rightly, i still think) seen as someone who would not lightly send troops into harm's way. unlike his boss, he'd been there, done that and wouldn't send others to do it unless he thought it absolutely necessary.

he, like so many others, was used by the bush administration, his integrity abused for their ends. it is a mistaken loyalty i suspect the gen. will never fully recover from.

gen. petraeus doesn't have nearly the pedigree that gen. powell had; i suspect most people couldn't pick gen. petraeus out of a police lineup, nearly every sentient american recognizes gen. powell.

with all due respect to gen. petraeus, he doesn't have gen. powell's bona fides. as well, he suffers from real-time data coming in, from people on the ground in iraq. we're not likely to be taken in by BS this time, there are other, legitimate sources of information, to compare his report to.

add to this the increased level of cynicism, and i don't expect many will be "swooning" over gen. petraeus and his report.

care to provide some (none / 0) (#12)
by cpinva on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 11:30:29 AM EST

actual evidence for your assertions?

as for his political aspirations, i never got the impression he had any. many others tried to get him to run for office, but he resisted.

the fact remains, which you've not disproven, powell is a combat veteran, designed an exceptionally successful model for the first gulf war, and was widely seen as someone with personal integrity and honor, who wouldn't knowingly lie to the american public. there's no evidence he did.

again, prove me wrong.


Evidence? (none / 0) (#14)
by Al on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 12:31:03 PM EST

Powell was charged with investigating a letter from a soldier to General Abrams 6 months after the My Lai massacre, denouncing atrocities against civilians in Vietnam. Powell wrote in his report:

In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent.

Powell's most infamous moment during the Iraq invasion has to be his show-and-tell in the UNSC where he produced a litany of so-called evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which we all know was completely false. To suggest that he did not knowingly lie is ludicrous. The man is not a complete idiot. He used all the prestige of his position to convey to the UNSC no less a poorly concocted pack of lies.

Powell stood by Bush and supported the disastrous invasion of Iraq all the way. Of all the criminals that led the Bush administration, Powell alone had the temerity to cultivate a public persona that showed him as apolitical and honest, i.e. trustworthy, in contrast to people like Cheney or Rumsfeld. This makes Powell particularly repulsive.

It is time to rid ourselves of this image of military leaders as politically pure and non-partisan, disinterested in politics and only interested in the good of the nation. It's all a crock. The latest military idol is Petraeus, who is rapidly revealing himself as yet another political hack in uniform. Enough already. These people have done enough harm.


: we all know that now. (none / 0) (#21)
by cpinva on Tue Sep 04, 2007 at 11:16:58 AM EST

or did you have some insider information that you didn't share with the rest of the class? exactly how do you know that powell knowingly lied to the UN? interestingly, you fail to say. did he personally tell you this? if so, maybe you'd care to share that with us as well.
frankly, i don't put much stock in people who claim they just know what someone else was thinking, absent some corroborating evidence. if that's all you've got, that, and a buck, will get you a small coffee at mcdonald's.

Maybe it's hindsight but (none / 0) (#6)
by hellskitchen on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 10:15:47 AM EST

I think all the cracks and fissures of Watergate showed up earlier than Bush's fiasco (discounting those of us who were leery of Bush right from the beginning).

It seems to me that Steve Soto's comments on the Mother Jones' article about Hillary and the Fellowship as well as the known issues of K Street lobbyists, Troutfishing's diary at Kos on the fundamentalist proselytizing at the Pentagon and this diary by BTD bring together a powerful and disturbing combination of influences that the average "rational" person can't get their minds around. People understand greedy, money-grubbing lobbyists ; megalomaniac power-seekers who see themselves as ordained by God to rule the world is a harder sell - except to those who want to rule.

Unfortunately, I think the surge continues along with the rapture.

Criticizing Dems is Angry, Negative, Cynical (none / 0) (#8)
by seabos84 on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 10:53:12 AM EST

Pessimistic, Bitter because ...

in the high flyer high achieving high money high keeping up with the joneses upper classes, reality is that the kool-aid ain't kool-aid and ummmmmmmmmmmm it tastes GREAT!

aren't we supposed to just keep sending our hard earned dollars and spending our very limited free time on the Democrats, who seem to primarily running on

----
WE-AIN'T-THE-FASCISTS! Look how horrible and mean and despicable the fascists are!!

Criticizing us is angry, negative, cynical, bitter and pessimistic

and it helps the horrible despicable meanies!!

we're nicey nice! nicey nice will make the world really nice!
---

end snark.

BDT you're right - WTF are the Dems?

One of the great disappointments to me in the www.land is how many www.landers come from that ridiculous don't criticize ethic.

people who don't criticize don't do so cuz they've accepted what their master's have taught them - shut up and do what you're told.

rmm.

CAESAR:

Let me have men about me that are fat;
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep o' nights:
Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look;
He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.

Where are the Netroots (none / 0) (#9)
by koshembos on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 10:59:53 AM EST

The Democrats are faced with a real problem. On one hand, they need the media which have their bathrooms adorned with Petraeus pictures, on the other their left side, the Netoots, is whining as they have done all along no matter what the issue is.

Either there is a combined Netroots effort to discredit Petraeus and the other generals or they sit thier toilet bowl and have a large stance. Whining doesn't help.

No one has ever tried to look the the lousy job the generals have done in Iraq. No one has asked why does it take so long to improve protection for patrolling soldiers. Why there are only a few officer casualties while almost all of the casualties are soldiers.

Wake up and try to convince the public that Paatreas has switched 180 degrees and that military history and research have shown that an insurgency take 10-15 year (we are at about 1/3 of the way).

: Speaking of whining (none / 0) (#10)
by Big Tent Democrat on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 11:01:23 AM EST

when do YOU stop?
Actually, I am happy to have your views expressed. Merely pointing out that WHINING is in the eye of the beholder.

Where are the Democrats? (none / 0) (#11)
by Edger on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 11:12:22 AM EST

On board and on message...

Petraeus Fixes the Intelligence to Fit the Policy (none / 0) (#13)
by john horse on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 11:48:08 AM EST

re: "T]he usual suspects [say], General Petraeus is a fine, upstanding officer who wouldn't participate in a campaign of deception -- apparently forgetting that they said the same thing about Mr. Powell."

But Petraeus has already begun fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy. Per the Washington Post:

The NIE [National Intelligence Estimate], requested by the White House Iraq coordinator, Lt. Gen. Douglas E. Lute, in preparation for the testimony, met with resistance from U.S. military officials in Baghdad, according to a senior U.S. military intelligence officer there. Presented with a draft of the conclusions, Petraeus succeeded in having the security judgments softened to reflect improvements in recent months, the official said.

(sarcasm alert) Participate in a campaign of deception? Not Petraeus. For Petraeus, like Powell, is an honorable man. So are they all honorable men.

Petraeus Is Another General Westmoreland (none / 0) (#15)
by john horse on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 12:48:14 PM EST

Under the category history repeating itself I found this passage in a book I'm reading about POWs/MIAs during Vietnam:

By November 1967, the need to convince the public that victory was imminent had become so urgent that President Johnson summoned home General William Westmoreland . . . to do public relations . . . General Westmoreland told the nation's leading opinion makers that "the enemy's hopes are bankrup" his forces were "declining at a steady rate" ... and the United States had entered the phase "when the end begins to come into view" (page 42 of M.I.A. or Mythmaking In America by H. Bruce Franklin)

While he was saying this, his intelligice (like Petraeus's intelligence) was telling him otherwise.

Having said all this, this is a golden opportunity for the Republicans to follow Senator Aiken's suggestion for Vietnam that we declare victory and go home. This is apparently what the Brits are doing. This would be the rational alternative (see Burbara Tuchman's book March of Folly). However I doubt Petraeus and Bush will do this.

One more thing about Petraeus. I predict a reduction in troops by the end of next spring. Both Bush and Petraeus will probably claim that this will be due to the "success" of the surge. However, the inconvenent truth is that we simply don't have the manpower to sustain the surge beyond next Spring.

By claiming that the surge was a success Bush believes he will be able to avoid the responsibility for the inevitable failure of Iraq that he will pass on to the next adminstration.

Someone more adept than I (none / 0) (#16)
by Big Tent Democrat on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 12:59:21 PM EST

should do the Saxby Chambliss trick (where he morphed Cleland into bin Laden) on Petraeus, morphing him into Westmoreland.


: I just did a quick check (none / 0) (#17)
by andgarden on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 01:23:10 PM EST

and don't see any free web software.
Any Photoshop gurus around?

President Bush surged into Iraq himself. (none / 0) (#18)
by oculus on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 01:50:45 PM EST

He may draw down troops, but, since he is the decider, its for him to know and us to find out how many and when.

I think I see them (none / 0) (#19)
by chemoelectric on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 03:37:51 PM EST

I think I see the Democrats, over there, hiding behind Petraeus.

Where oh where have they gone (none / 0) (#20)
by Donna Z on Mon Sep 03, 2007 at 10:43:23 PM EST

A couple of day ago, Dana Bash reported that the Dems feel that the congressional approval numbers are down because they have been spending too much time on Iraq. She said that there was a growing consensus that they must move on to more domestic issues.

No transcript.

I've filed Bash's comments away to see if they have any truth to them. We'll see soon enough. Judging from past behavior....