Gen. Petraeus stated today that he confirms that he indeed supports continuing the "strategy change" in the direction of focusing on "Securing the civilian population, (along with the training of the Iraqi troops)" from the prior strategy which was apparently focused on "counter-terrorism (and the training the Iraqi troops)". Furthermore, when asked when we could leave Iraq, Gen. Petraeus replied that we can leave when we have "stablized" Iraq sufficently, and he further elaborated that when he said "stabilized" he meant stabilazation in the sense where communities and neighborhoods in Iraq are secured. Here for the first time, we are given a real goal besides "to win", or beat the bad guys.
Well I couldn't agree more...but IN 2004!!! The idea for me at that time was that the chaos, the infrastructure damage and the random (and intential) carnage created by the U.S. led War in Iraq only created the kinds of hungry bellies, and desperate people that choose terrorism. There is in fact no greater recruitment mechanism for terror than to feel the pangs of hunger or to see your brother, wife, or child blown apart by a faceless superior force.
Yet even though I thought that the attack in Iraq by U.S. led forces was unjust, and even though I didn't believe any of the pretext that was espoused by the George Bush administration that led up to the invasion in 2003, in Nov. 2004, I supported the continuation of the War in Iraq with the a renewed focus on the protection Iraqi civilians and general stabilization.
And though Kerry did not explicitly state during the first debate that the goal in Iraq was to stablize the Iraqi civilians, it was basically Kerry's promise that "help was on the way" for the troops. Kerry took the advice of some U.S. generals seriously (i.e. that the U.S. coalition didn't have enough troops on the ground) and he suggested that Americans couldn't do it alone in Iraq, and so Kerry made the call for an International conference on Iraq.
Meanwhile, George Bush called for a "stay of the course". The "course" was essentially to go after the bad guys, and to "take the war to them before they took it home to us (and train and supply Iraq police forces)". Yet we came to find out that the Bush policy was actually creating more and more bad guys with his efforts. In fact, the policies of George Bush's administration created so much chaos that an Al Qaeda cell was able to establish a foothold that was not there before the U.S. initiated war in Iraq.
Today Gen. Petraeus in fact repeatedly referred to Al Qaeda's capacity to stimulate sectarian violence. All of this was a result of the Bush administration's focus on "hunting down the bad guys" at the expense of the Iraqi civilians (i.e treating the Iraqi Civilians as statistics for some theory of "collateral damage").
But now according to the testimony of Gen. Patraeus, we understand that four years after the start of the War in Iraq, the U.S. has apparently decided to changed the course (with a lot of ambiguity) in the direction of protecting the civilian population in order to stabilize, rather than pursue some ambiguous (and endless) hunt for the "bad guys".
Petraeus today claimed that he was in fact the one that ("before it was approved") had asked for an increase of the troops on the ground. Moreover, when asked if he had enough troops to achieve the said goals, Petraes chose the route of saying 'no' without saying 'no', by saying something to the effect that "there is no commander in history that wouldn't like more troops and more money".
Additionally Gen. Petraeus mentioned that success meant reconciling differences with the enemy and said something to the effect that he had been given some great advice not long ago that 'you don't reconcile with your friends, but reconcile with your enemies'. I couldn't agree more, but how far is this kind of talk from the comportment that the neo-cons had been taking?
The problem is that an extra 30,000 troops isn't going to stablize Iraq. That was the problem in 2004, and it remains the problem now. The only way we can increase the troop level to achieve the said goals is to have a real coalition, but the "you're either with the terrorist or with us" or the shotgun diplomacy of the Bush administration will never work. In fact it has alienated the U.S. from the rest of the world. That was the problem in 2004 and it continues to be the problem now.
Moreover building the largest overseas military base doesn't send the right message to tribal chiefs and local leaders. It sends the message that the U.S. is out to secure the second largest oil reserves in the world, not secure its civilians. So in the end, even if the goal of the surge is to finally focus on civilian stabilization it is too little and sadly probably too late (i.e. trust has been broken). Moreover the new objective inherent in the surge (according to Petraeus) seems to be contradicted by the personal comportment of George Bush and company.