Bush Finds a General

Mike Burleson

According to the Washington Times, Senator John McCain compares Bush’s shakeup of the Iraq command, including the appointment of Lt. General David Petraeus as head of Coalition Forces, to Abraham Lincoln’s frequent rotation of generals during the Civil War. In the same article, a reporter likened Petraeus as “Bush’s Grant”.

President George Bush, in prosecuting the War on Terror has yet to fire a top military commander (though since Vietnam failed generals aren’t fired but promoted to higher command). His choice to bestow the top command in Iraq on David Petraeus seems a stroke of genius. Few in the Army are as widely respected as “King David”, even by the too often overly critical Press. Petraeus led the famed 101st Division in the first year of Operation Iraqi Freedom with Newsweek noting, “No force worked harder to win Iraqi hearts and minds”.

Here is a little known incident from the book “America’s Victories” by Larry Schweikart:

“During Operation Iraqi Freedom (where the highest-ranking soldier killed as of 2005 was a colonel), Lieutenant General William Wallace, Major General David Petraeus, and Brigadier General Benjamin Freakely were standing near a Humvee and using it as a desk when mortar rounds dropped a few hundred meters away and started “walking” toward them. They calmly continued their meeting until the rounds were only thirty meters distant, and then backed up a few feet to continue. Small arms and mortar fire erupted and the generals moved in the direction of the fire so rapidly that the military police protecting them had to run to keep up. Before the generals could engage the enemy, a helicopter spotted the mortar tube and artillery took it out, but the troops were impressed by the instinctive reaction of their corps leaders to move to the sound of the guns.”

Writer and former military officer Ralph Peters declares Petraeus “the greatest peacekeeping general in the world”. Another former Army officer and personal friend Frederick J. Chiaventone maintains the general “is no one’s fool. Of all the senior military officers on active duty today he likely has the best, most down to earth appreciation of the factions at work (in Iraq) and what is at stake.”

Petraeus gained renown in 2005 when he began the near impossible task of whipping the Iraqi’s into an effective fighting force. Now the native troops regularly battle beside US troops against the insurgency and are increasingly conducting solo operations.

Afterwards, the general was tapped to head the service’s Combined Arms Center, where he helped author an updated Counter-Insurgency Manual. Of all America’s top leadership, Petraeus understand the new warfare in Iraq. Strategist Thomas Barnett (the Pentagon’s New Map) in a March Esquire article revealed the general’s respect for legendary British guerilla fighter T.E. Lawrence. According to Barnett, Petraeus believes “Lawrence had it right. By this he means: it is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.” More than anything, this saying coincides with Bush’s strategy: as the Iraqi’s stand up, we will stand down.

The consequences of an American defeat and retreat are as real today as in Grant’s era. Imagine a weak and divided Union and Confederacy, eyeing one another belligerently, unable to intervene during the rise of German totalitarianism in Europe. Picture also the fate of Asia with no United States able to halt the tide of Japanese imperialism.

Visualize now a discredited and defeated US Army today, as a renewed isolationism sweeps our self-absorbed nation, concerned only for universal health care and environmental issues over the very real and freedom threatening crisis of our time. Meanwhile a new fascism dominates the oil rich Middle East, using its wealth to spread jihad into Europe and blackmail to the few countries beyond their reach. Such a fate need not be if we once more rally behind the President, trusting in his renewed Iraq strategy, a determined general, and our brilliant and brave troops to see the battle through to the end.

My blog is at newwars.blogspot.com

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Mike Burleson is a regular columnist with Sea Classics magazine and an advocate of Military Reform. He resides in historic Charleston, SC. http://tv.groups.yahoo.com/group/honestnews/ http://newwars.blogspot.com/

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