The faux outrage by republicans (and way too many democrats) over MoveOn's "Petraeus Betray Us" ad is maddening for too many reasons, but let's start with the most important one: MOVEON WAS RIGHT. And America knows it.
While most people only saw the photo and headline of MoveOn's ad, I'd imagine that most people never read the text below it. Here's what it said:
General Petraeus is a military man constantly at war with the facts. In 2004, just before the election, he said there was “tangible progress” in Iraq and that “Iraqi leaders are stepping forward.” And last week Petraeus, the architect of the escalation of the troops in Iraq, said, “We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going to do everything we can to build on that progress.”
All of this, of course, is true. What it doesn't mention is that the claim of "tangible progress" in 2004 was from an op-ed Petraeus wrote for USA Today. For an active officer to inject himself into a presidential election by defending Bush's Iraq strategy (which was already faltering) was an extremely unusual move, and it raised concerns back then that Petraeus was allowing himself and the military to be used as political tools. Of course, Petraeus' 2004 claims of "tangible progress" and "Iraqi leaders are stepping forward" debunk themselves. Bush has claimed "progress" every day since the war began. Bush also said the US was definitely "winning" right up until he said we weren't, which precipitated the surge escalation.
Every independent report on the ground situation in Iraq shows that the surge strategy has failed. Yet the General claims a reduction in violence. That’s because, according to the New York Times, the Pentagon has adopted a bizarre formula for keeping tabs on violence. For example, deaths by car bombs don’t count. The Washington Post reported that assassinations only count if you’re shot in the back of the head — not the front.
The whole point of the surge escalation was to provide "breathing room" for the Iraqi government to magically abandon centuries of ethnic division and work together, and that has not happened. The Iraqi government is more divided than ever, with both Sunni and Shia blocs quitting the government in protest. The fact that violence can be temporarily reduced in small areas by flooding them with soldiers is not a new strategy. The US has successfully done that for every Iraqi election, but the surge escalation is not even accomplishing that — the number of Iraqi civilian, Iraqi security, and US military deaths this summer are higher than they were last summer, and the Pentagon casualty count directly contradicts the count given by Petraeus. Political reconciliation is the key, and it isn't happening.
It was only through a TPM blogger's Freedom of Information request that more was revealed about the methodology. Here's one thing in MoveOn's ad that you could sort of say is inaccurate — apparently deaths by car bombs are now counted as sectarian, but this is probably a recent change after the uproar caused by the initial revelation that deaths by car bombs weren't being counted. Attacks on the Iraqi police, military, and government are not counted, despite the fact that these three groups are overwhelmingly Shia, and attacks on government officials have been along sectarian lines. Deaths from Sunni on Sunni and Shia on Shia fighting are not counted. The methodology document also claims, "An attack must target civilians to be considered ethno-sectarian," which means that deaths from armed ethnic militias fighting each other are not counted. The document does not mention bullet hole placement, so you could technically claim that this is an inaccuracy in the MoveOn ad, but I imagine that this type of informal classification with its air of gallows humor is something that people on the ground have come up with, not official policy. In any case, you can see how narrow and subjective the classification of "sectarian violence" really is.
According to the Associated Press, there have been more civilian deaths and more American soldier deaths in the past three months than in any other summer we’ve been there. We’ll hear of neighborhoods where violence has decreased. But we won’t hear that those neighborhoods have been ethnically cleansed.
True. As noted, the number of Iraqi and US military deaths during this summer's surge escalation is higher than any previous summer of the occupation. It is also true that the Shias, Sunnis, and Kurds are ethnically cleansing neighborhoods and towns, causing millions of Iraqis to leave their homes and turn on their neighbors. I'm sure that when Iraq has completely divided itself, violence will temporarily go down, and Bush will take credit for it as a sign of "progress" and proof of his brilliant strategy.
Most importantly, General Petraeus will not admit what everyone knows: Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war. We may hear of a plan to withdraw a few thousand American troops. But we won’t hear what Americans are desperate to hear: a timetable for withdrawing all our troops. General Petraeus has actually said American troops will need to stay in Iraq for as long as ten years.
True. Iraq is in a civil war, and the US can't win it by simultaneously supporting and fighting both sides. We can barely understand the ancient rift between Sunnis and Shias, let alone solve it. Bush did indeed announce plans to not replace 5,700 troops (which is different from withdrawing them) by Christmas. Petraeus also announced that most of the 30,000 troops that comprised the surge/escalation would come home in April, and that this was a sign of progress. This is an outright lie — those troops had to come home anyway or have tours extended beyond 15 months, which would have been politically unpalatable and would probably break the military once and for all. Americans overwhelmingly want the war to end and for our troops to come home. Petraeus, following the Bush administration, thinks we should stay for the foreseeable future.
Today, before Congress and before the American people, General Petraeus is likely to become General Betray Us.
Petraeus may not have cooked the books himself, but he was sure happy to serve them up on a steaming pile of bullshit. By doing so, he not only betrayed every American, but every soldier and their families. Just like Colin Powell betrayed the nation and the world when he presented a case for war with Iraq that he knew to be based on bad intelligence. Americans are still stung by that betrayal, which is why Powell has gone from being one of America's most respected people to a pariah. We take a lie that big personally. Petraeus stood before Congress and followed orders. He was there to tell the truth.
So there it is — point-by-point proof that MoveOn was right. But what was sadly lost in the faux outrage following their ad is that most Americans, way ahead of the politicians and the media, agreed with MoveOn. The proof comes in three interesting polls.
The first was one taken before the Petraeus testimony. It found that 53% of Americans polled believed that Petraeus would exaggerate (meaning LIE) in his testimony about the success of the surge escalation. That's a pretty amazing number for a guy who is supposed to literally ooze integrity and credibility from every orifice, but it shows how many Americans already knew that Petraeus was a Bush yes man. After all, the generals who wouldn't toe the Bush line (like Abizaid) got fired.
The second poll was taken after the Petraeus testimony. It found that the percentage of Americans calling for a reduction in US troops in Iraq actually went up after Petraeus' testimony, from 35% to 39%. Not only did Petraeus fail to convince Americans that the surge escalation had worked, he actually convinced more Americans that the war should end! Americans knew that Petraeus was not telling the truth, and his lengthy testimony didn't convince them otherwise.
The third reflects the viewership of Bush's primetime speech given after the Petraeus testimony was finished — a speech that Fred Kaplan of Slate called "the worst speech he's ever given on the war in Iraq, and that's saying a lot." Bush's speech also reminded viewers that the Petraeus' plan is actually the Bush plan, and why Bush is the Worst President Ever. According to an article in Time:
Some key Hill Republicans, in fact, were upset that [Bush] returned front and center on the issue at a time when the White House had so carefully ceded the selling of the surge to Petraeus and Crocker. "Why would he threaten the momentum we have?" says one frustrated Capitol Hill Republican strategist with ties to the G.O.P. leadership. "You have an unpopular President going onto prime time television, interrupting Americans' TV programs, to remind them of why they don't like him."
FOX, CNN, and MSNBC all reported that the democratic response to Bush's speech (given by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI)) received higher ratings than Bush's speech. This means people probably changed the channels when Bush's speech started because they knew it would just be the same failed bullshit about "progress", "staying the course", hiding behind the troops, and stalling that most Americans are sick to death of. But the viewers came back to hear the democratic response, probably because they were hoping that the democrats could provide some true opposition to Bush and his republicans, as well as true leadership in extricating the US from the Clusterfuck in the Sand. The dems sure haven't provided either of those yet, but they're a lot more likely to provide it than Bush and his rubberstampers (Ron Paul excepted). The democratic Congress has been receiving such low approval ratings because they have been acting too much like the republican congress, which is the opposite of what they were elected to be.
As I said in a previous post, MoveOn has nothing to apologize for except underestimating the depth of republican desperation to avoid talking about the war and the depth of democratic spinelessness/cluelessness in not getting MoveOn's back. Because the majority of Americans know MoveOn was right — Petraeus would lie, and the US needs to end the Iraq war now.
h/t ThinkProgress
