http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/opinion/11tue1.html?bl&ex=3D1189742400&en=
=3D62f0f2dc1c5026fb&ei=3D5087%0A
September 11, 2007
Editorial
Empty Calories
For months, President Bush has been promising an honest accounting of
the situation in Iraq, a fresh look at the war strategy and a new plan
for how to extricate the United States from the death spiral of the
Iraqi civil war. The nation got none of that yesterday from the
Congressional testimony by Gen. David Petraeus, the top military
commander in Iraq, and Ambassador Ryan Crocker. It got more excuses
for delaying serious decisions for many more months, keeping the war
going into 2008 and probably well beyond.
It was just another of the broken promises and false claims of success
that we've heard from Mr. Bush for years, from shock and awe, to
bouquets of roses, to mission accomplished and, most recently, to a
major escalation that was supposed to buy Iraqi leaders time to unify
their nation. We hope Congress is not fooled by the silver stars,
charts and rhetoric of yesterday's hearing. Even if the so-called
surge has created breathing room, Iraq's sectarian leaders show
neither the ability nor the intent to take advantage of it.
The headline out of General Petraeus's testimony was a prediction that
the United States should be able to reduce its forces from 160,000 to
130,000 by next summer. That sounds like a big number, but it would
bring American troops only to the level of troops that were in Iraq
when Mr. Bush announced his "surge" last January. And it's the rough
equivalent of dropping an object and taking credit for gravity. The
military does not have the troops to sustain these high levels without
further weakening the overstretched Army and denying soldiers their 15
months of home leave before going back to war.
The general claimed a significant and steady decline in killings and
deaths in the past three months, but even he admitted that the number
of attacks is still too high. Recent independent studies are much more
skeptical about the decrease in violence. The main success General
Petraeus cited was in the previously all-but-lost Anbar Province where
local sheiks, having decided that they hate Al Qaeda more than they
hate the United States, have joined forces with American troops to
combat insurgents. That development - which may be ephemeral - was not
a goal of the surge and surprised American officials. To claim it as a
success of the troop buildup is, to be generous, disingenuous.
The chief objective of the surge was to reduce violence enough that
political leaders in Iraq could learn to work together, build a viable
government and make decisions to improve Iraqi society, including
sharing oil resources. Congress set benchmarks that Mr. Bush accepted.
But after independent investigators last week said that Baghdad had
failed to meet most of those markers, Mr. Crocker dismissed them. The
biggest achievement he had to trumpet was a communiqu=E9 in which Iraqi
leaders promised to talk more.
General Petraeus admitted success in Iraq would be neither quick nor
easy. Mr. Crocker claimed that success is attainable, but made no
guarantee. With that much wiggle room in the prognosis, one would
think American leaders would start looking at serious alternative
strategies - like the early, prudent withdrawal of troops that we
favor. The American people deserve more than what the general and the
diplomat offered them yesterday.
For that matter, they deserve more than what was offered by
Representative Ike Skelton, chairman of the House Armed Services
Committee. When protesters interrupted the hearing, Mr. Skelton
ordered them removed from the room, which is understandable. But then
he said that they would be prosecuted. That seemed like an
unnecessarily authoritarian response to people who just wanted to be
heard.
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