Matthew Rothschild at The Progressive makes much of General Petraeus' answer to a question from Senator John Warner on Wednesday. Since Chris Matthews of MSNBC's Hardball also went into orbit over Petraeus' response to this question last Tuesday night it might be worthwhile to consider a point I would have thought was obvious, but apparently isn't. Here's the first part of Rothschild's post:
During the Petraeus hearings in the Senate on Tuesday, there came a crucial and unexpected confession from the general .... then Warner asked whether the war in Iraq was making America any safer, a pretty fundamental question, one that Russ Feingold had tried to get an answer to a little earlier but failed.
Here's what Petraeus said: "Sir, I don't know, actually."
After 3,750 U.S. soldiers dead, 28,000 wounded, and maybe close to a million civilians killed, and the leading U.S. general in Iraq can't tell us whether it's made us any safer?
What a confession, what a concession for Petraeus to make!
Why are we there, then?
And how does he ask more soldiers to risk their lives for a war that he knows might not (indeed, is not) making us any safer?
And how does he talk to families of our fallen soldiers when he can't affirm that the war is doing any good?
And how does he console a mom whose son sustained horrific brain injuries in Iraq when he doesn't know, actually, whether Bush's war is making us any safer?
Nor could Bush have been happy with that answer, for Petraeus's confession undercuts Bush's whole rationale for this war in the first place, the notion, repeated ad nauseum, that the Iraq War is crucial for our safety.
It should be clear, however, that no one other than God can know whether what we're doing in Iraq is making us safer. Suppose the Iraq project was a total success and Iraq became terrorist-free zone. Does that make us safer? Who knows? Perhaps the terrorists flee Iraq and take up residence in some other country to which they wouldn't have otherwise fled but from which they're able to launch several successful attacks against us. If so, did the Iraq war make us safer or less safe?
Suppose Petraeus gave an affirmative answer to Sen. Warner and tomorrow a terrorist cell from Indonesia or someplace hits an American city. The terrorist act might have had nothing to do with Iraq but we can be pretty sure the media would be blasting the Petraeus' assurances of the previous day.
We can't know whether we're being made safer by what we're doing in Iraq, we can only hope we are, but we can be pretty confident that if we pull out of Iraq we will almost certainly be less safe. In other words, success in Iraq is a necessary condition for the safety of the United States, but it's not a sufficient condition. This is not a difficult concept to grasp, but it's apparently beyond the ken of those who grasp at any straw to discredit the war effort.
Consider, for example, these words from Senator Clinton:
"There is no military solution, that is why I believe we should start bringing our troops home."
This unfortunate non sequitur is from the mind of the lady who was once acclaimed to be the smartest woman in the world. That lofty accolade notwithstanding Mrs. Clinton evidently doesn't understand that it simply doesn't follow from the fact that military action will not by itself produce peace in Iraq that therefore military action is unnecessary to produce peace in Iraq.No policy, no strategy, has a guaranteed outcome, and it's disingenuous of Rothschild to jump on Petraeus' reply to Warner's question as if it was some sort of proof that all is really lost. Moreover, by saying as he does above that he knows the war is not making us safer, he dons the fool's cap that Petraeus wisely shunned. Rothschild knows no such thing, but it would be interesting to ask him to cite precisely those facts which assure him that he does possess the knowledge he claims to have.
RLC