New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has the best analogy about General David Petraeus’ testimony and “the surge” in Iraq yet:
She likens it to a girdle.
Writing in Times Select, she says of the testimony:
But the whole thing was sort of a fizzle. It’s obvious that the Surge is like those girdles the secretaries wear on the vintage advertising show, “Mad Men.†It just pushes the fat around, giving a momentary illusion of flatness. But once Peaches Petraeus, as he was known growing up in Cornwall-on-Hudson, takes the girdle off, the center will not hold.
And it was clear from their marathon testimony that the Iraqi politicians are useless, that we’re going to have a huge number of troops in Iraq for a long time, that there’s no post-Surge strategy, that they’re just playing for time, hoping that somehow, some way, things will look up in the desert maze of demons that General Petraeus referred to as “home.â€
Indeed: the more time goes on, the more there is an inescapable feeling that a prime motivator right now is to try to keep the war going in the HOPE that it will get better so that when Bush leaves office it hasn’t hit the totally “it’s useless!” point. THAT toughest of tough messes could then left for whoever replaces him…quite possibly a Democrat. MORE:
The strategy is no more than a soap bubble of hope, just as W.’s invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy about W.M.D.’s and an illusory view of Iraq.
Even though it was 9/11, Osama was barely mentioned all day.
Republican Senator John Warner, freer than ever now that he’s announced his retirement, turned the screw on the two witnesses.
Do you feel, he asked the general, that the Surge “is making America safer?â€â€œSir, I don’t know actually,†Peaches replied. “I have not sat down and sorted out in my own mind.â€
This will be the quote quoted on weblogs, the soundbite used on TV and on radio (except perhaps Rush and Sean’s shows) and quoted in many weblogs. It seemed truly shocking that Petraeus could not simply answer “YES” …if he felt that way.
Dowd ends her piece this way:
Republicans seemed oblivious to the fact that they may have scored points short term while laying the groundwork for disaster long term. W. won’t care because he’s not running, but it will be political suicide for Republicans entering the campaign with 130,000 troops still in Iraq.
As Lindsey Graham joked to the witnesses about Congress, referring to the talk of the dysfunctional Iraqi government, “You could say we’re dysfunctional and you wouldn’t be wrong.â€
And that underscores the weird political moment in which we are living.
Polls show an overwhelming Americans feel this war was wrong, the justification for it was wrong (and false), its management is poor and want the U.S. to pull out if not sooner then certainly not later.
Yet, all turning points seem to have their moments and for reasons that will be debated for a long time, the Democrats seem to have lost the one handed to them by the 2006 elections.
Bush may not be high in the polls, but he’s the one with the political clout right now (throw out the clippings about him being a weak lame duck and delete those old blog posts), with just enough support from loyal GOPers who have now come back to the fold (again) to checkmate the Demmies.
Were the Demmies outclassed? Outmaneuvered? Were they too hesitant to use their perceived power? Or did they overreach in rhetoric, egged on by the party’s progressive activist base?
That will be debated but what won’t be debated is that Petraeus may have changed some (mostly but not exclusively) Republican minds, but the Democrats are perceived now as a lot less powerful, effective and political savvy than they were after the Nov. 2006 elections.
Perception means a lot in politics.
It can be as constraining as a girdle.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.