9-10-07, 5:24 am

A combined 'super-committee' hearing in the House of Representatives listened to testimony offered by General David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker today (9-10-07) for several hours.

Originally billed as an independent report on the situation in Iraq, Petraeus' testimony, which was reduced to a series of charts and graphs distributed to the members of Congress, has been long-awaited as a key statement for many moderate Republicans who claim to be uncomfortable with President Bush's ongoing Iraq war policy.

In his testimony Petraeus praised heightened security capacity and described improvements as 'substantial.' Stating directly, 'I wrote this [testimony] myself,' Petraeus boasted declines in 'security incidents' and that 'Iraqi security elements have been standing and fighting.'

Petraeus described the fundamental security problem in Iraq as 'ethno-sectarian violence,' and added that Al Qaeda remains a strong force.

Petraeus then produced a series of charts on the levels of violence in Iraq over time, most of which began in mid-2006 and ended in August 2007. According to the charts civilian deaths, sectarian killings, and terrorist activities like car bombings and suicide bombings are basically back to pre-surge levels.

In other words, the violence that was escalated in the early months of the surge have been reduced back to levels seen in early and mid-2006. Unfortunately, this isn't 'substantial progress.'

Petraeus neglected to inform members of Congress that heightened security in Baghdad has likely resulted more from population displacement than from increased security units patrolling the streets. Prior to the war, Baghdad was about 65% Sunni. Today it is about 75% to 80% Shia. Much of the displacement has come from the forced expulsion of Sunnis from Baghdad over the past 4 years. Surely ethnic cleansing as a security tactic is nothing to brag about.

Petraeus also produced a body count of Al Qaeda members killed during the surge: several top leaders and about 2,500 Al Qaeda fighters.

The practice of providing body counts, initiated during the Vietnam war, is generally rejected as unsound military policy now. Joint Chiefs Chair General Peter Pace denounced the practice, reportedly telling writer Bob Woodward, 'You can kill folks for the next 27 years, and you're not going to have a better environment.' (State of Denial, 2006)

Despite Pace's argument, Woodward's inside accounts of White House meetings with military officials reveal that President Bush has sought body counts, despite the fact that they are a false and misleading measure of a given situation.

Petraeus proceeded to tout the much-discussed 'progress' in Anbar Province in western Iraq. Anbar, which holds approximately 5 percent of Iraq's population, recently saw some Sunni tribal leaders accept US offers of cash and arms to join the battle against Al Qaeda.

This tactic, which Petraeus admitted could not be imitated in most other parts of Iraq, was developed out of a Pentagon report called the 'Iraq Tribal Study,' according to the Washington Post.

The study warned that such a situation is temporary, a point not raised in Petraeus's prepared statement. It was motivated not out of a strong surge of loyalty to the Iraqi government or to US occupation forces. The truth is, the Washington Post reported, developments in Anbar arose as a result of US military disengagement in the province combined with offers to arm Sunni groups who fear Shia dominance in Iraq.

According to the Post, the Pentagon report said that the groups involved would play 'both ends of the insurgency, coalition versus the insurgents, against the middle while maintaining a single motive, to force the coalition to leave Iraq.'

No responsible analyst would describe this as a basis for a long-term settlement or of political reconciliation in Iraq. Rather, such tactics merely delay ongoing sectarian conflict and political gridlock.

Petraeus then proceeded to report that he had recommended to his superiors a withdrawal of the 'surge' forces beginning this month and ending in the summer of 2008. He described this as a substantial withdrawal.

This latter claim is somewhat misleading. The surge was scheduled to end in the spring of 2008 anyway, and those troops were to be redeployed back to their US stations.

Ironically, too, this publicly announced schedule for withdrawal didn't raise the usual Republican objections that providing a timeline for redeployment would 'embolden the enemy.'

Petraeus did not provide many details about US casualties during the surge, which rival 2006 numbers.

In opening remarks, Rep. Ike Skelton (D-MO), in his John Wayne-esque cadences, refused to dispute the credibility of Petraeus and Crocker. But during the question-answer session, Skelton picked up on public impatience for promised progress in his single question to Ambassador Crocker.

Given that we've been waiting for progress for more than four years, Skelton pointedly asked, what makes you think anything will be different in the next six months in Iraq?

Crocker could not give a direct answer. In fact, he hinted that he couldn't foresee measurable progress on benchmarks, which he proceeded to dismiss.

The benchmarks he dismissed were part of a mandate signed into law by President Bush last May for the non-partisan Government Accountability Office to examine the political progress made by the Iraqi government. The GAO found that the Iraqi government met only 3 of 18 benchmarks.

Ironically, despite Crocker's present dismissal, the benchmarks were originally worked out by President Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Al-Maliki in the summer of 2006 in order to hold off growing political discontent with Bush's Iraq policy.

Crocker testified that progress couldn't be measured in concrete terms but in terms of impressions and feelings. He insisted that current 'debates' over federalism in Iraq, Iraqi 'frustration' with political gridlock, and the lessening of how 'controversial' is the idea of Iraqi nationalism are 'the seeds of reconciliation.'

Unfortunately, these vague impressions and behind-the-scenes murmurings were not the rationale for the troop surge. The purpose for the surge, critics argue, was not to provide a secure space in which to debate or express frustration or talk about nationalism. The point was that, as Bush said last January, because failed security had prevented reconciliation, a surge would provide a secure space in which Iraqi leaders could make concrete, measurable progress as listed in the benchmarks.

'Despite the best efforts of very brave young men and women over there, the surge has not met its objectives,' national security analyst Lawrence Korb said. Citing ongoing sectarian violence, political quagmire, Iraqi security failures, and high US military casualties, Korb added, 'It is not going in the right direction.'

Concrete progress clearly has not happened, even in the most limited sense of the term progress accepted by the White House. Crocker's allusion to abstract progress is not meaningful.

In closing his remarks, Crocker essentially laid out the same political strategy already in place before the surge, but could offer no new means of achieving it. There was no new 'troop surge' tactic up the administration's sleeve this time around. All we can do now is wait and hope everything works out, Crocker appeared to say.

Neither did Crocker address in any substantive way Iraq's economic and infrastructural crisis, except to gloss over severe, life-threatening problems with typical Washington bureaucratese: 'Iraq's economy is performing significantly under potential.' (See here for an account of the growing humanitarian crisis in Iraq with sources.)

For their part, Republicans at the hearings spent most of their time defending the credibility of General Petraeus and insisting that Congress should be a rubber stamp for Bush's failed policies.

Throughout the testimony, despite frequent peppering of remarks with statements about Iraqis doing things for themselves, the dominant attitude of Petraeus and Crocker was that the US was in charge of Iraq. It is our responsibility, and its political leadership is under our tutelage and political and economic decisions are under our watchful, parental eye, they seemed to imply.

The central question for the antiwar majority of about two in three Americans is how do we get beyond the logic of the so-called debate taking place in Washington? From the Bush and pro-war side, we hear the same claims we heard years ago: success is around the corner, but we have to stay in Iraq as long as it takes to get to that corner. From others, we hear that the surge has failed and Iraqis are hopeless, so we should leave.

Neither argument is satisfactory, and this has produced a political gridlock here, which goes to the advantage of the Bush administration with his veto power, the slim Democratic majority in Congress, and his vast control over sources of information coming out of Iraq.

What is needed, is a third approach. We might examine closely the conclusions offered in the Jones Commission report which argue that the occupation itself is a major source of conflict as it gives an 'impression of permanence' and the lack of sovereignty on the part of Iraqi local and central governments.

Rejecting the success-failure dynamic that favors Bush politically, a comprehensive and coherent approach to changing the Iraq war policy should envision a redefinition of US military mission from combat to training, reconstruction, and complete redeployment. There should be a responsible and good-faith diplomatic effort to build regional collective security and reduce interference.

In addition to troop redeployment, the US should implement a complete political withdrawal and adopt its own position of non-interference. Political power, for better or worse, has to be quickly and systematically shifted to Iraqi control. Economic and social decisions have to be made by Iraqis now not by Washington think-tanks or the White House.

And because the Bush administration, even with the bleakest estimates of its policy failures available, refuses to take definitive steps to change course, Congress, as a co-equal branch of government, must take the responsibility to mandate a change.

--Joel Wendland can be reached at

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