Austin Bay makes some good points today on what Petraeus’ report to Congress will likely entail, and why it is important.
Petraeus’ report is a creature of this instantaneous and pervasive media. For better or worse, he is responding to the condition and using the condition.
War doesn’t operate on media time or political calendars. Petraeus’ report will address that fact. The Baghdad clock and the Washington clock run at different speeds. The Baghdad Clock is ponderously slow and painfully incremental. Why? Because what the Iraqi government does and does not do must be politically digestible in a nation where democratic politics is a brand new experience.
Washington’s clock — at least the one run by the likes of Sens. Carl Levin and Hillary Clinton — is set to the 2008 election.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki disdains their myopia. At a news conference earlier this week, Maliki said: “There are American officials who consider Iraq as if it were one of their villages, for example Hillary Clinton and Carl Levin. They should come to their senses.”
Petraeus will give all politicians an opportunity to come to their senses.
One can look at the General as pressing the front-page and even the podium in front of Congress, into service as part of the strategy to win the war. To one degree or another, the media has always played some part in the battle space. Would the Spanish/American War have been fought if not for the “Sinking of the Maine.” The “anti-war” crowd has been trying their hardest to sap the credibility of Petraeus since at least July. They are already discounting anything he might have to say in front of Congress. Even as Harry Reid starts edging away from his hardline stance.
This fits in nicely with some other recent, related posts in the blog-sphere:
Arguing from Different World: http://www.thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2007/08/debating_mr_hewitt.html
But that’s why the debate is getting so dysfunctional on our end: all name calling and cries of traitor if you discuss our options in anything less than totally unconditional terms (to be against Bush is to hate America and its military and be a surrender monkey). It is highly unrealistic and approaching infantile to restrict our conversation so, not to mention full of hypocrisy (Anyone give a shit over 400,000 dead in Darfur? Don’t plan on it anytime soon. And yet, if Bush and Co. plan the postwar better, we could have been there and back by now. And please don’t remind us of what the hardcore righties declared when Clinton finally took us into the Balkans, leading them to back Bush in 2000 because he promised outright never to engage in such craziness, only to then make Clinton look small in comparison).
We’re losing our ability to discuss Iraq with any perspective–at least in the public realm. I discuss the issues and strategic choices with none of this hyperbole or name-calling on a daily basis in professional realms (yes, that vast world of reality beyond the blogs, where I earn a real living working with actual people with actual names), and there heads remain quite cool on the subject, despite many schools of thought existing.
Opinions set in stone: http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=6793
yesterday in a comment about the GAO report:
” Each side will highlite the select portions of the various reports that support their arguments. (And I’ll include myself in that statement.) And we’ll have yet another toss-up of conflicting visions and talking past each other. I think, most people who’ve made up their mind, aren’t going to change their mind anytime soon.”
For the most part, I think he’s right. But if you believe this Zogby poll, there is still an apparent segment of the country that is changing its mind about Iraq and has suddenly put at least these poll numbers in a majority saying they do not believe the US has lost the war in Iraq
GOA Report: http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=6791
The “Petraeus Report”: http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?entry=6764
When all you hear from the media is the “negative” aspect of what’s happening on the ground in Iraq and only allowing the “positive” or neutral information to be allowed to be dispersed across the country, it’s not hard to understand that persuasion towards ending the “negative” from continuing may gain much ground.
Had the American people been allowed to see and hear the whole picture threre would not have been near the devisiveness about the war overall. In that situation a more subjective and reasoned viewpoint would have developed and a unified stance of the American people would have been seen supporting the effort.
Certain extremely partisian poiticians anticipating the upcomming elections took it upon themselves to undermine anything and everything about the current administration whether it had to do with the Iraq war or not to destroy the credibility of the President. This made it much easier to take an anti war stance and divide the country concerning Iraq. They knew very well how emotional many people would be concerning the war because many of their relatives were involved in it. The constant feed of unfavorable information about the war coming from the media, because they had the ability to manipulate it, caused the anti war attitude to snowball.
The image of the current administration has been sullied in the eyes of many Americans by the vicious onslaught for undeserved reasons. Investigation after investigation has been conducted on charges of very little substance presented as if they were ligitamate and serious matters. Without a huge Public Relations effort of a seperate and apart from the biased national media we are all exposed to, countering the image of the administration generated by the extreme partisan liberal political left is an uphill battle.