After Petraeus: Congress Bedazzled, The People Betrayed

[babylonsister]

After Petraeus: Congress Bedazzled, The People Betrayed
Submitted by davidswanson on Thu, 2007-09-13 15:52. Media

UFPJ Talking Points #52
By Phyllis Bennis, Institute for Policy Studies

"You can't kill everyone out there" --General David Petraeus, 13 Sept. 2007, NPR, Explaining why Iraq needs to be a "thinking man's war"

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The multiply-repeated statements from Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker almost sidelined the usually central Bush administration justification for the occupation of Iraq - the so-called "global war on terror." It came up in questions, but was otherwise ignored. Cong. Ackerman even pushed on the issue, saying that if the "surge" in Iraq was really able to find and eliminate terrorists who might attack the U.S., no one would want to withdraw any troops. But that was not the case, he said, because the Iraq War is not about terrorism.

What Ackerman didn't do was point out the obvious: the target du jour for this round of spin is Iran. The "troubling" news that Petraeus described as counter-balancing his otherwise "good news" is that Iran is more involved in Iran than the U.S. anticipated. Iran is a bigger problem than we thought. Iran is responsible for the deaths of U.S. service-members. Iran is evil incarnate. While Petraeus denied a reporter's question of whether his speech was designed to ratchet up pressure against Iran, there is no question that that was the main text. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice joined the campaign, calling Iran "a very troublesome neighbor," and her deputy, John Negroponte weighed in with allegations of Iranian arms being provided to the resurgent Taliban,

During his presentation Monday in the House of Representatives, members of congress from both parties seemed too intimidated by the general's chestful of medals and unblinking calculating demeanor to even think of challenging anything he said. There were feistier exchanges in the Senate, but still no indication that anyone was prepared to substantively challenge the Petraeus-Bush stay-the-course, pull out a few thousand troops, get back to the January 2007 "pre-surge" levels by summer of 2008, and settle in for a long, long time. He actually said some version of "I'll come back in March <2008> and tell you how many troops can come home."

Petraeus' advice was to pull out about four thousand "surge" troops by the end of 2007, and consider withdrawing the rest of the 30,000 "surge" troops by the summer 2008. That would leave the "pre-surge" level of 130,000 troops to remain in Iraq for the indefinite future. But even the claim that there will be an overall reduction of 4,000 troops by the end of this year turns out to be false. The Pentagon announced last week that they will increase troops in Iraq by 4,000 in the next few weeks, bringing the total to 172,000. So any so-called "reduction" of 4,000 "surge" troops in December will simply return troop numbers to the expanded 168,000 total of today.

By Thursday the media had agreed that Bush and Congress were essentially on the same "compromising" page. The New York Times headline was "Bush to Sell Limited Iraq Pullout as Middle Way," while the Washington Post featured "Democrats Push Toward Middle on Iraq Policy."

The Republicans are likely delighted that Petraeus called for a slight adjustment of troop numbers, a small withdrawal that they can embrace as evidence that it is NOT a stay-the-course strategy.

Democrats are repeating their worn-out mantra "we don't have the votes" to de-fund the war. But many organizations in the peace movement are looking at a different way to stop the war without risking a veto.

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