Duncan "Atrios" Black often jokes about the media's tendency, especially the TV pundits, to reflexively declare any political development as "good for the Republicans". This morning's San Francisco Chronicle print edition carried two news articles (on page A3) on the testimony Monday of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus. The onger one, under the byline of the Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead, Troop surge report isn't turning point everyone hoped for, had this lede:
The upbeat assessment Monday on the state of the war in Iraq by Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker appeared to provide President Bush with the breathing space he needs to forestall major congressional defections from his war policy.
It's good for the Republicans! The online headline is, "Upbeat assessment buys Bush some time on Iraq".
Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, warned in stark terms against the kind of rapid pullback favored by the Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, in a day of testimony that drove home the continuing inability of the Democrats to force a change in strategy in Iraq.
It's good for the Republicans!
If most voters are desperate to hear that the Iraq War will go on indefinitely with American troops committed to fighting there for the indefinite future, then it will be good for the Republicans.
Because in the House hearings Monday, the Republican members who spoke got across the message that the Republican Partysupports the Iraq War. The Republican Party thinks things are going fine in the Iraq War. The Republican Party is willing to almost unanimously support the continuation of the Cheney-Bush war policies in the Iraq War. The Republican Party sees no foreseeable end to the Iraq War and are willing to keep American troops fighting there indefinitely.
Maybe MoveOn.org should just give money to Republican ads declaring how much the Republican Partysupports the Iraq War. The Republican Congressmembers made a few specific points clearly in the House Petraeus hearings:
The Republicans regard Gen. Petraeus as our Saviour in Iraq.
The Republicans think it is wrong, disgusting, horrible to question or criticism the claims of our military and particularly of our Saviour-General Petraeus on the Iraq War.
The Iraq War is mainly against "Al Qa'ida".
The Iraq War is going really, really well, as well as it possibly could be going, unless maybe we'd had Saviour-General Petraeus in charge from the start. But it's going to be a long time before we achieve Victory so we have to be patient and let the war continue to go brilliantly for years and years and years.
As Republican Congressman Mike Pence put it on the PBS Newshour last night, "[Crocker] said there's been some gradual improvements, but he said it's a very, very slow incline." Maverick McCain said in his opening statement Tuesday at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing that "the road ahead is long and tough".
Very, very slow progress, a "long and tough" war still ahead: that good enough for the Republican Party in the Iraq War, and we can expect a US exit from the Iraq War to be "very, very slow" if the Republican Party gets its way.
That message is "good for the Republicans"?
The only Republican Congressmember at the hearing Monday that seemed to take a genuinely critical stance toward the war was Walter Jones of North Carolina.
The Democrats managed to get across some very different points:
The Democratic Partyis opposed to the Iraq War.
The Democratic Party wants American troops withdrawn from Iraq.
Political reconciliation in Iraq, the original purpose of The Surge, is farther away than ever.
We've been hearing optimistic predictions from the Cheney-Bush administration for over four years, and they've all turned out to be as bogus as Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction".
Saviour-General Petraeus himself has been making optimistic projections for years.
Other military leaders favor a more rapid withdrawal of US forces from Iraq.
The relationship of the Iraq War to the "global war on terror" (GWOT) is very tenuous.
The justifications for the Iraq War have changed a number of times, from combating nonexistent WMDs to restraining Iranian influence.
The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) are a long way from being adequately prepared to defend their country and keep order over four years into the war.
The available polls show that the American presence in Iraq is tremendously unpopular among Iraqis.
The Iraq War is putting significant strains on the US military.
The administration is making little meaningful effort to engage Syria and Iran diplomatically.
The arguments made by the administration for the war are often weak or just goofy: if this is part of the GWOT, how can we say that "sectarian reconciliation" is sufficient to allow the US to reduce troops levels? How can we say The Surge is succeeding if the political reconciliation that was its purpose isn't moving forward?
The administration and war supporters cite statements by Al Qa'ida and Iranian President Ahmadinejad to support the importance of the Iraq War - but those might not be the best authorities on what the best US policy needs to be.
Recent high-level evaluations of The Surge, including the Jones report and the GAO report, present a more pessimistic picture than Saviour-General Petraeus and other administration spokespeople have presented.
I was impressed that Democratic Congressman Brad Sherman asked Petraeus if he would obey an order from Bush to attack Iran without Congressional authority for it.
But I would criticize the Democrats on some points. Some questioners wasted their time and diluted their own message by asking a series of questions before getting a response.
It's too easy to criticize people for what they didn't say. But someone should have asked about the air war. This is a very significant part of the military effort, and the heavy reliance on air power also gives the lie to the Cheney-Petraeus claims about progress in Iraq.
And someone should have followed up on Petraeus' curious statement that the US isn't providing weapons to Sunni tribes. David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo made a plausible guess that this comma-dancing may be based on the notion that the US isn't giving weapons to the tribes, but instead giving them money to buy weapons.
It's probably not a big deal in Monday's context. But Ray McGovern notes that the Committee didn't bother to swear in the Saviour-General and the Ambassador at the start of the hearing.
Duncan "Atrios" Black often jokes about the media's tendency, especially the TV pundits, to reflexively declare any political development as "good for the Republicans". This morning's San Francisco Chronicle print edition carried two news articles (on page A3) on the testimony Monday of Ambassador Ryan Crocker and Gen. David Petraeus. The onger one, under the byline of the Chronicle's Carolyn Lochhead, Troop surge report isn't turning point everyone hoped for, had this lede:
