I was (ad may yet still be) having some technical difficulties with my desktop yesterday, so I didn't get to blog on the Petraeus as much as I had planned. Had my computer been fully functioning, here are a few things I would have no doubt commented on:
+ In what was clearly Iraq is not the "central front in the war on terror."
+ That admission was important because it opened the door for Sen. Feingold to shoot down some of the administration's more nonsensical statements. Gen. Petraeus, for example, tried to fall back on the "bin Laden has declared Iraq the central front line." Feingold answered by suggesting that the United States, and not its enemies, should determine its foreign policy priorities, particularly given that al Qaeda has declared its priority to be bankrupting the United States. If we are going to listen to them, shouldn't we actually listen to them?
+ Sen. Reed did a wonderful job of getting Amb. Crocker to admit that Iran has more influence over our Iraqi "friends" than over our "enemies."
+ Sen. Jeff Sessions, a Republican, accidentally (I would guess) got Gen. Petraeus to admit that Iran in fact wants to see Iraq, no destined to become the first "Shiite democratic" state, to succeed. I'm not sure what's more shocking: that Petraeus admitted this, or that he needed to. It's only logical that Iran would want to see its neighbor become a stable democracy like themselves.
+ Sen. Obama unleashed a clever series of one-two-three punches. First he got Gen. Petraeus to admit that the total elimination of Al Qaeda is impossible. Then he got Crocker to admit that Iran and Al Qaeda are both in Iraq because we are there, and that because Iran shares a border with Iraq, we cannot expect to end their involvement in Iraq. Finally, he dropped the hammer by demonstrating that these points make clear that their previously articulated definitions of success - no Al Qaeda in Iraq, no Iranian influence, and a prosperous and diverse democracy that is not a threat to its neighbors - are by their first two admissions impossible to reach. And that as a result, we have no definition for success in Iraq and should expect to stay in country for the next "30 to 70 years." Crocker objected, but could offer no more than "its hard and complicated" in his own defense.
+ All of this serves to underscore just how foolish our "we don't talk to bad guys" approach to foreign policy truly is. Prior to the war, Iran had no influence whatsoever in Iraq. Now thanks to our efforts there they do. Given that Iran's population is majority Shiite, this was inevitable. As such, it would have made sense to begin talking to the Iranians from day one. Iran played a crucial role in the early days of the war in Afghanistan. Prior to the war in Iraq, they reached out to us to offer a series of dramatic compromises. Rather than negotiate from a position of strength, we rejected their offer and doubled down on war. And now we need the Iranians far more than they need us. Very stupid, and also very predictable.
+ Sen. Lindsay Graham was right to suggest that the al Qaeda brand came to IRaq in part to "establish a base in the heart of the Middle East." Dana Goldstein is right to answer that this was only possible because we replaced Saddam's regime with chaos. More fundamentally, however, it is also true that al Qaeda has a global branding strategy designed to provoke us into fighting unnecessary wars so as to drive us into bankruptcy. They have been quite literally saying this for years now, but for some reason we continue to ignore them.
+ If it wasn't clear before, it is now: McCain doesn't know even the most basic details about who our adversaries are.
+ Democracy Arsenal makes what is probably the single most most important point to take away from the hearings:
Petraeus and Crocker refuse to tell us what our long term strategy is in Iraq, holding to the weak excuse that they can't make predictions into the future. But they have no problem making scary predictions into the future about what will happen if we withdraw.
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