Remember the scene in Goodfellas when a prison-confined Paulie chopped garlic with a razor blade to make a marinara? That was what it was like today at the Senate Armed Services Committee when legislators tried to get Gen. David Petraeus to break with President Obama over the July 2011 date to being transitioning security responsibilities to Afghan soldiers and police.
Petraeus actually went through the same thing, from the same senators, two weeks ago. But that was before Gen. Stanley McChrystal's command imploded and Petraeus received Obama's nod to take charge in Afghanistan. So maybe it was inevitable that certain senators -- not just Republicans, but Democrats too -- wanted to see if Petraeus's views shifted at all now that he's faced with the responsibilities of command.
Short answer: they haven't. Again and again and again, Petraeus reiterated the same line: he backs the July 2011 date as "the beginning of a process" of placing Afghan troops in the lead and beginning a "conditions-based" withdrawal, and "not the date when the US heads for the exits and turns out the lights." Only this time he larded his testimony with repeated references to times Obama has said the same thing, going back to the December 1 presidential speech at West Point unveiling the Afghanistan surge. Petraeus said he backed placing the date in the president's strategy in order to send "a message of urgency," particularly to the Afghan government, so it steps its game up.
For the better part of four hours, senators parsed and parsed some more, trying to find daylight between Obama and Petraeus, and not really succeeding. The closest they came was when Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the ranking Republican on the committee, got Petraeus to concede that neither he nor any other military officer he knew came up with the July 2011 date. But, Petraeus said, while he might not have proposed it, "there was no question but that in the final session" of internal administration debate, "that this was discussed and I supported it." After all, he continued, "a whole of of things appropriately intrude" on strategy-making other "than just strictly military advice."
At the same time, Democratic senators spent so much time at the hearing spinning Petraeus's support of the transition date that they neglected their own problems on the left. Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), the speaker of the House, told theHuffington Post's Sam Stein yesterday that she expects a "serious drawdown" of U.S. troops in July 2011. Pelosi herself added that she didn't expect -- per Obama, and per Petraeus -- that "turning out the lights" is in the cards in Afghanistan by then. But the White House hasn't exactly bent over backwards to send the message to its progressive base that it expects much more war to unfold in Afghanistan even after July 2011 comes and goes.
Accordingly, none of what Petraeus said particularly sat well with senators, mostly on the right, who think that setting any date to mark a transition in strategy is a dangerous concession to the insurgency and an uncertain signal to the Afghan and Pakistani governments. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), one of McCain's closest political allies and usually a big Petraeus fan, raised his voice at one point when he lambasted comments attributed to Vice President Joe Biden indicating a more rapid withdrawal than Petraeus anticipated. But Petraeus said that he personally talked with Biden and secured Biden's support for the strategy as he understands it. For an administration so recently rocked by internal acrimony between McChrystal and some senior diplomats, it was quite the message of unity.
Still, it didn't overcome any GOP senators' perception that Obama picked the date simply for domestic political reason. And with Hamid Karzai's government backsliding on key issues like curbing corruption, quite possibly because of a perception that the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan is less enduring than Obama has pledged, it's not likely to stop the debate. But Petraeus repeatedly declined hours' worth of opportunities to signal disagreement with the Afghanistan strategy, for better or for worse, so if the Obama administration is making a mistake, they're all going down in the same ship.
Photo: DoD
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