The Petraeus difference

Ralph Peters:

IN Baghdad yesterday, Dave Petraeus, the most successful American general in more than a half-century, passed the flag to his former deputy, Gen. Ray Odierno. It was a milestone not only in our great endeavor in Iraq, but in the 5,000-year history of the lands watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

Petraeus moved up to take over our Central Command, or CENTCOM, where he faces the gritty challenges of the world's strategic junkyard, the greater Middle East: No rest for the victor. But we can pause to consider what he achieved:

Two years ago, many Americans believed Iraq was hopeless. Personally, I'd begun to despair of the administration ever fighting to win. Without a sharp change in policy and practice, our effort to bring democracy to a wretched population would end by discrediting democracy and unjustly humiliating our military.

In "politics above country" Washington, partisan Democrats celebrated our impending defeat, salivating over American casualties as vote-getters. Repeatedly, they sought to deny our troops the resources they needed to fight and survive.

Then, in a very dark hour, two things happened. Realizing - at last - that former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had failed him, our president backed a hail-Mary-pass troop surge to give Iraq one last chance. And he chose a new commander, Petraeus.

We all know what happened: Iraq turned around with a speed that bewildered the experts.

In the 19 months of the Petraeus era, Iraq evolved from a bloody landscape sliding toward civil war to a land of hope. Urban combat and a literal reign of terror have been replaced by the spreading rule of law, a blossoming economy, LA-quality traffic jams - and the political squabbling that accompanies democracy.

As Petraeus is always the first to note, much remains to be done and much could still go wrong. But every single trend line has turned positive. Al Qaeda's grip has been broken. (It can still set off bombs, but can no longer set itself up as a champion of Sunni Muslims.) Our troops are coming home at a steady pace. And (dare one say it?) we're winning.

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Yes, a handful of savvy US officers had begun to grasp the opportunity to "flip" the Sunni tribes of Anbar to our side even before Petraeus took command. But Petraeus recognized a greater potential and expanded the effort dramatically: He turned a promising local business into a nationwide franchise.

Yes, the surge gave Petraeus more flexibility than his predecessors had. But the critical difference was that he employed our troops differently, sending them into neighborhoods to stay and provide security for the people. And he exploited the surge's psychological effect - convincing allies and enemies alike that we weren't about to quit. Without that reassurance, the turnaround wouldn't have happened.

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On the home front, the defeat-is-virtuous crowd had talked themselves into believing they were getting a Gandhi; instead, we got a Grant. No previous US commander in Iraq remotely approached Petraeus' relentless determination to track down and kill the enemy's senior leaders. (Think that didn't make a difference?)

Petraeus now stands in a long line of great captains who fought in Mesopotamia, a line stretching back past Alexander the Great to the conquering kings who haunt the Old Testament. Yet there's a crucial difference in the case of this American warrior: He didn't come to conquer, but to offer freedom.

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Petraeus is not the political general that opponents of the war have portrayed. Yet his success has not only destroyed a wicked enemy, but it has destroyed the credibility of the MoveOn left and politicians like Barack Obama. When Obama says that the surge succeeded beyond all expectations, he is mostly looking in the mirror, because the troops that have been fighting this war thought it was winnable all along and they finally got a leader and a strategy to demonstrate their optimism which prevailed over the enemy and the pessimist at home.

George Bush's determination to win this war will eventually also be recognized as important by historians. There should also be a chapter on the venality of the enemy we defeated and the politicians opposing Bush who were content to let them win.

David Ignatius and editorial board of the UK Times also look at the Petraeus difference. The Times concludes:

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The scholar-warrior from Princeton and West Point now turns his attention to Afghanistan. Physically, he will move from the green zone in Baghdad to Centcom HQ in Florida. But his prodigious energies will be devoted to defeating the Taleban where Nato and his own predecessors have failed so far. To succeed, he will have to defy history. His record suggests he is the man to do just that.

I believe he and our troops are up to the task.

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