September 15, 2007

A Quick Word On The Hume Interview

While I didn't have time to write about it at the time, catching the Hume interview of Petraeus and Crocker was really a downer. The first 17-18 minutes (I timed it) was simply given over to Petreaus walking through his charts. Then Hume did his merry best to conflate the war in Iraq with our struggle against al-Qaeda. Worth noting, his guests didn't appear particularly interested in dissuading him from such excesses. Ditto the jingoistic beating of the Iran war drums. It all smacked of Brezhnev era propaganda (I may have been young, but I lived in Moscow at the time). Don't get me wrong. The "Betray Us" nonsense was ham-handed over-reaching (I don't doubt Petraeus or Crocker's basic professionalism or character), but it was nonetheless painfully apparent each was in spin-mode. This was partly, of course, because they are in the trenches and so understandably grasping at whatever perceived positives. More worrisomely, however, and particularly with Petraeus, I got the sense he really believed that because "ethno-sectarian" violence was down in Baghdad (to the extent this is true, more because ethnic cleansing has reduced the number of 'mixed' neighborhoods and so too the opportunity to engage in such wanton killing sprees, not to mention the 'security-barrier' walls we're erecting about town), and further because Anbar's security situation had improved, we had really turned a corner. History will show who is right on this score, but suffice it to say I suspect Petraeus is yet another man who will ultimately see his reputation suffer mightily as a result of the Iraq imbroglio. As for Crocker, as I hope to analyze a bit later, the thin gruel he served up about benchmarks not technically being met but that nevertheless real progress on center-provincial relations was being made was unconvincing in the extreme.

Posted by Gregory at September 15, 2007 06:27 PM