Well, Now We Know . . .

. . . that study was dead wrong.  You know, the one about how "political conservatives don't, won't and can't change their minds, reverse a decision or revise a judgment no matter how much contradictory evidence stares them in the face," while liberals have "higher tolerance of ambiguity and complexity, and greater openness to new experiences."

The netroots were not going to listen to General Petraeus no matter what he said.  Their minds were made up in advance.  The preset concrete conviction of those minds included the calumny that Petraeus is an administration lackey and propagandist who could not possibly be saying what he really observed and thought.  (MoveOn calls him BetrayUs, and even John Kerry is offended.  Fred Thompson counter-grandstands, challenging Dem candidates to return their donations.  Bill Maher may have meant to be mocking, but hit on something strangely stirring when he pointed out how classical the general's name sounds, intoning in a "Gladiator" basso, "Petraeus! Where is your sword?"  Do you hear those shivery trumpets from "Patton"?)

What will be interesting will be whether "the American people" show "greater openness" than MoveOn, the Kossacks & co.  Where a lot of "the people" seem to be right now is a disgusted fusion of "big mistake" and "waste of lives and money."  We should never have gone into Iraq (I now think that's right; at the time, I could very reluctantly see the point), ergo we should get out, preferably before anyone else's son, daughter, father, mother, mate, sibling or friend has to die for a mistake; barring that, ASAP.  The kamikaze left cares only that the mistake was a Republican one, and is dead set on cashing in on that politically in 2008.  But what will they do if a preponderance of "the people" decide that two wrongs don't make a right, and the way out of this mistake is not to make another one?  The fact that John McCain got positive buzz from that last debate may be telling.

One thing they are already doing is trying to make sure "the people" don't get untainted, undiscredited information that might incline them toward that conclusion.  But smearing Petraeus could backfire big-time:  an early August Gallup poll showed that twice as many Americans (47%) thought well of him as otherwise (21%).  (Another third were MIA:  "One in three Americans (32%) are not familiar enough with Petraeus to rate him."  Ain't that America.) 

Petraeus and Crocker say that a hasty withdrawal would be "devastating."  According to the WaPo, House Democrats did not much challenge them.  There will doubtless be more posturing at the Senate committee hearings tomorrow -- as Fred Kaplan writes on Slate, "if just because several presidential candidates sit on the panels." 

Comments

[Jeffrey]

I am not sure what I think, even after carefully watching his opening remarks and some of the questioning.

As one on the 'left' (ever since the left was move out from under me), I was reminded of Powell's presentation to the UN. Since I was mistakenly impressed by that one, I was more suspicious of the charts and things that seemed to come from the administration.

I was prepared enough to know that Anbar was not the result of the Surge, and was glad to see Petraeus use it as an example.

But the feel I have for this is that the most populated areas of Iraq are being purged of Sunni's by Shiite terror gangs (kidnaps murders etc), but Anbar is a success mainly because its mostly Sunni, so can't really be used as an example for anything but minor villages and towns where the population is likewise skewed. So everywhere else, Iraq-AQ is going to have a conflict to hide among, and I don't think there is anything that will change until the Shiite's win.

Which, I think they are. To many Sunni's are leaving, just have to read Riverbend or Neurotic Iraqi Wife or similar blogs to see.

So I think the civil war that we have allowed to happen will finish, and it looks like the Sunni's have lost and are fleeing. I think the government will fall apart, either when we leave or sooner, and the Shiite's will turn on the Kurds next out of economic necessity.

So I guess my initial reaction to the General's report (and I do highly respect him, he has lead the way on counter-insurgency warfare, and is an honorable man), is that it doesn't matter anymore. That his planned reductions make sense to pave the way for a more complete withdrawl, and that unless anything changes on the Iraq political side, we've pretty much just repeated the mistakes of the British in the middle east and accomplished none of their successes.

[michael Reynolds]

We are now presiding over a soft partition. (Basically the Biden plan.) We're allowing Iraq to devolve into at least 3 smaller countries because the political/diplomatic battle in Iraq has been lost.

We are now allying ourselves with Sunni insurgents in order to force out Al Qaeda Iraq insurgents. The result will not be a unified Iraq, it will be a rump Sunni state financed by Saudi Arabia and armed by us. Nothing this Sunni/Anbar state does to its women, its minorities, its moderates will make us proud.

Go back through the Petraeus/Crocker testimony and see if you can find any instance where they talk about victory or about creating a model democracy that will transform the middle east. We've abandoned all our original objectives. We've accepted defeat on those objectives.

We are down now to hoping we can avoid an even greater disaster. We're no longer there to win or to accomplish anything that can be called victory. We're just hoping to avoid unleashing genocide and a regional war.

As usual MoveOn manages to draw attention to itself and away from the facts. But MoveOn is not the core of the problem. The problem is that we are reduced to crawling into bed with Sunni killers who just a few months ago were flowing the legs off American soldiers, and pretending that this is an accomplishment.

[michael Reynolds]

By the way, the much-touted withdrawal? It's not a sign of success. It's a military necessity. It's evidence of military weakness, not enough men in uniform to keep up our obligations.

Rotations are coming up, the surge was always doomed to be followed by a slump. And anyone who at this late date thinks fewer men in Iraq will translate into anything but a power vacuum is really not paying attention.

[amba]

Jeffrey: good thing you're America, too. Thank you for that.

What it means is: Iran is the big winner. Since Saddam, for all his evil, was acting as a check on Iran, by removing him we mainly did Tehran -- a much more potent enemy -- a huge favor.

[michael Reynolds]

Amba:

Yep.

[Funky Dung]

Again I agree with MR. What's the world coming to? ;)