Will ‘victory’ in Iraq make us safer?

September 11, 2007

Today’s Senate hearings with Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker have been surprisingly informative, but I have a hunch this may prove to be the one-minute exchange that you’ll be hearing the most about.

The clip shows Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) asking Petraeus specifically whether “victory” in Iraq will make the United States safer. Petraeus is surprisingly blunt, “I don’t know, actually.”

The question was, at first blush, almost a set-up. I can’t speak to Warner’s motivations, obviously, but it seemed like a softball — Warner would ask if success would make us safer, Petraeus would say yes, and Warner could move on to exploring how to make the policy produce a “victory.”

But Petraeus seemed to miss his cue. As Spencer Ackerman noted, “Bush describes a victory in Iraq as an epochal achievement for America and a potentially decisive blow to terrorism,” but asked today whether a victory, no matter how unlikely it appears, would make us safer, the top commander in the theater isn’t certain.

Now, to be fair, I don’t want to wrench this from context. Petraeus probably didn’t intend to make such a sweeping concession; he probably meant to argue that he’s focused on the mission in front of him. Whether the success of that mission helps improve the security of the United States simply isn’t on his radar.

But this wasn’t a trick question. If we’re fighting a war, conditions are dismal, and hard-to-predict success won’t improve our national security, then it reinforces the idea that maybe, just maybe, we should get the hell out of there.

For those who can’t see video clips from their work computers, here’s a transcript, by way of Ilan Goldenberg:

Senator Warner: Are you able to say at this time if we continue what you have laid before the congress here, this strategy, do you feel that that is making America safer?

General Petraeus: Sir, I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

Warner: Does that make America safer?

General Petraeus: Sir I don’t know actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind what I have focused on and what I have been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the multinational force Iraq.

I have a hunch we’ll be seeing quite a bit of this one.

I think you’re being too kind to him, CB- seems he should know something about whether the war will make us safer or not.

  • This is not a war. This is an occupation. An occupation force has by its definition already achieved victory, or else it wouldn’t be occupying, now would it?

    This whole debate is beyond stupid.

  • Allow me to highlight the key information in that exchange:

    Senator Warner: Are you able to say at this time if we continue what you have laid before the congress here, this strategy, do you feel that that is making America safer?

    General Petraeus: Sir, I believe this is indeed the best course of action to achieve our objectives in Iraq.

    Warner: Does that make America safer?

    General Petraeus: Sir I don’t know actually. I have not sat down and sorted in my own mind what I have focused on and what I have been riveted on is how to accomplish the mission of the multinational force Iraq.

    Obviously the “objective” isn’t to make us safer. He hadn’t even thought about that one, because it wasn’t on his list of things to worry about.

    The real objective is to make AIPAC’s client safer, and to protect our empire’s life blood. Of course these idiots will never admit that, nor will they accomplish it.

  • This may seem like an entirely too logical question, but shouldn’t there be some nexus between what we are doing in Iraq and what that means to the bigger picture of both regional and US security? I mean, there’s never any way to know for certain what will follow from any given course of action, but there are reasonable conclusions that can be drawn – some good and some not-so-good, and some just disastrous – and that’s where having all the information, regardless of which side of the argument it comes down on, comes in kind of handy.

    This is something that has been absent from the process in this administration, with the pattern being to assign altogether too much certainty to the outcome by stacking and packaging the information in order to lead others to come out where they want them to. They seem to have a huge blind spot for all the stuff in-between, all the possibilities that could ensue when all the facts are considered, which is why we are stuck in this quagmire with no immediate prospects of getting un-stuck.

    Petraeus is so invested in this plan – it’s his plan – which is why he should not be providing the assessment at all. He’s not going to say that it isn’t working, and those who believe that it isn’t working should be given an equal voice in the discussion.

    He knows this is not making us safer, but he can’t say that – so all he has is that he doesn’t know – that in essence, that it isn’t his job to know. So, maybe we should be hearing from those whose job it is to know, or at least to make an objective assessment.

  • What constitutes a victory? That, like the rationale for the war, keeps shifting. How can a victory make us safer when the nature of “victory” keeps shifting? I think the Bush administration’s vision of safer is like using more and more antibiotics. The rest of us realize that at some point the germs become immune.

  • I think what you’re seeing here is a military man who can only speak to the military objectives, not to the political objectives–a “safer America” as achieved through a bogus War on Terror (a military man knows you can’t have a war on a type of tactic). The moronic pResdent of US is supposed to have considered the political objectives and, at the very least, conveyed them and convinced the Senate members of his own party. This is just a shameful reminder that we (and Dear Leader) are looking at Petraeus as a stand-in president. Disgusting.

  • Oh please. By tomorrow at the latest, you’ll have Petraeus’ “clarification” (fresh from the WH): he doesn’t know if victory in Iraq will make us safer “than we are now” (b/c we’re fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here), but he does know that anything less than victory will make us much less safe (b/c Al Qaida will follow us home, etc.)

    Any bets?

  • This guy clearly doesn’t know his lines. Can’t they install one of those boxes in his back like Bush had at the debates?

  • Just like I said this morning:

    More of the same broken record. More excuses for putting Iraqi National Security ahead of American National Security.

    They’re bankrupting our country and breaking the back of the U.S. Armed Forces, all in the name of the Global War on a Psychological State. But I have a question. How does occupying Iraq prevent hijackers from boarding planes and using boxcutters to invade the cockpits of aircraft, then piloting those aircraft into various targets, including the U.S. Military Command Center?

  • The same question was posed in the House yesterday, and Petraeus responded that the security of the US is not his mission. His is the mission of Iraq; that question needs to be posed to the Generals tasked with securing the US.

  • Petraeus is surprisingly blunt, “I don’t know, actually.”

    Oh damn, Dick Cheney must have forgotten to give Petraeus all his talking points.

    Anyway – it’s a “conservative” question – and what the hell would Cheney and Bush know about conservative politics? Wasting lifes and wasting money is something that is a simply a no-brainer in the new neo-con Repug Party – its the NO 1 reason why Warner and Hagel are leaving – its just not their party anymore. True conservativism is dead.

  • CB, I find it interesting that you find credibility in this statement by the General, but everything else uttered by him is viewed as lies and spin.

  • “I think what you’re seeing here is a military man who can only speak to the military objectives, not to the political objectives…” — Frak

    I agree. It’s the question that needs to be asked, but Warner asked the wrong person. Of course, asking the right person is going to get him nowhere either. The answer would inevitably be that a free and democratic Iraq is in America’s interests. Of course, a free and democratic China might be in America’s interests as well…

    Such is the dilemma one faces when emotion and delusion replace reason and reality. Conversations go in circles and nothing makes sense. Nothing is resolved.

  • I thought that was a good and surprisingly frank answer. It would have been easy enough for Patraeus to just say yes and give Fox “news” their sound byte, but it’s fair to say that answering that question on an official level would be above a general’s pay grade and answering it on any kind of personal level would have been out of place in those proceedings.

  • Will ‘victory’ in Iraq make us safer?

    You gotta look at it like you’re GOP:

    What’s the most serious threat facing the Republic ? Democratic control of Congress and the White House.

    So, yeah, “victory” in Iraq would make us safer.

    This isn’t a war — it isn’t even an occupation, not really. It’s a proxy second American civil war, where the dying has, in a triumph of modern business management techniques, and an advance over that 1860’s unpleasantness, been outsourced, and the battlefield moved offshore.

  • I’m going with the bureaucrat explanation.

    Petraeus is a career military man. He’s following his orders: go sell this escalation to the TV cameras (and don’t ever call it an escalation! Call it a “surge”– that tested best with the focus groups).

    So he’s got blinders on. Why would he have spent time thinking about whether this has any implications for American security stateside? Just prepping for this dog-and-pony show has probably consumed 100% of his focus for months.

    Warner asked the right question. And he *did* ask it of the right person– Petraeus is who Cheney sent. The problem is, Cheney sent the wrong person. He should be sitting there himself answering the fucking questions… but you know he doesn’t look as good in front of the TV cameras as a guy whose uniform is loaded down with so much brass he can’t stand up straight.

    And what’s with all those other generals situated behind him, with their heads cut off, filling up the camera frame so that when you see this guy all you see is medals? Jesus fuck, this is taking the Ollie North strategy way too far.

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