Petraeus Against The World

Beware the opinions of one man lionized for years who now sees his mission as a crusade.

For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region.

The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.

One of those plans, according to a Centcom officer, involved slashing U.S. combat forces in Iraq by three-quarters by 2010. In an interview, Fallon disputed that description but declined to offer details. Nonetheless, his efforts offended Petraeus's team, which saw them as unwelcome intrusion on their own long-term planning. The profoundly different views of the U.S. role in Iraq only exacerbated the schism between the two men.

"Bad relations?" said a senior civilian official with a laugh. "That's the understatement of the century. . . . If you think Armageddon was a riot, that's one way of looking at it."

There has been a sustained PR offensive designed to promote the message that the escalation has been universally good and that this fact is unanimously accepted by the serious people. But that's not the case, as this "bloom-off-the-rose" story proves. I believe Gen. Petraeus thinks he's being sincere but he also has a tremendous ego despite a record of failure (which makes him a perfect Bushie). His first order of business after delivering testimony on Capitol Hill is to give an exclusive interview to Fox News, fercryinoutloud. And he is leading a strategy that his superiors are so desperate to have work that they'll enter into the dumbest alliances imaginable:

Why the sheiks turned remains a point of debate, but it seems clear that the tribes resented al-Qaeda's efforts to ban smoking and marry local women to build ties to the region. "Marrying women to strangers, let alone foreigners, is just not done," Australian Lt. Col. David Kilcullen, a Petraeus adviser, wrote in an essay.

The sheik who forged the alliance with the Americans, Abdul Sattar Buzaigh al-Rishawi, traced the decision to fight al-Qaeda to Sept. 14, 2006, long before the new Bush strategy, but the president's plan dispatched another 4,000 U.S. troops to Anbar to exploit the situation. As security improved, the White House eagerly took credit.

The "Anbar Awakening" represented perhaps the most important shift in years, but it generated little debate at the White House. Long before the tribes switched sides, the administration conducted a policy exercise on how to team up with former insurgents. But when such an alliance occurred, it bubbled up from the ground with no Washington involvement. "We're not smart enough to know the course that these matters might take," Rice conceded to an Australian newspaper last week.

We're still not smart enough. Bush is betting on Sattar Abu Risha, a petty thug who is building his own militia loyal only to his tribe. And we're arming it. We're setting things up for an even more raging conflagration in the near future.

It'd be nice to see a real debate at the Petraeus hearing tomorrow and not the clown show I expect.