A Phony Hero for a Phony War

By LUCIAN K. TRUSCOTT IV

FASTIDIOUSNESS is never a good sign in a general officer. Though strutting military peacocks go back to Alexander’s time, our first was MacArthur, who seemed at times to care more about how much gold braid decorated the brim of his cap than he did about how many bodies he left on beachheads across the Pacific. Next came Westmoreland, with his starched fatigues in Vietnam. In our time, Gen. David H. Petraeus has set the bar high. Never has so much beribboned finery decorated a general’s uniform since Al Haig passed through the sally ports of West Point on his way to the White House.  

“What’s wrong with a general looking good?” you may wonder. I would propose that every moment a general spends on his uniform jacket is a moment he’s not doing his job, which is supposed to be leading soldiers in combat and winning wars — something we, and our generals, stopped doing about the time that MacArthur gold-braided his way around the stalemated Korean War.

And now comes “Dave” Petraeus, and the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. No matter how good he looked in his biographer-mistress’s book, it doesn’t make up for the fact that we failed to conquer the countries we invaded, and ended up occupying undefeated nations.

The genius of General Petraeus was to recognize early on that the war he had been sent to fight in Iraq wasn’t a real war at all. This is what the public and the news media — lamenting the fall of the brilliant hero undone by a tawdry affair — have failed to see. He wasn’t the military magician portrayed in the press; he was a self-constructed hologram, emitting an aura of preening heroism for the ever eager cameras.

I spent part of the fall of 2003 with General Petraeus and the 101st Airborne Division in and around Mosul, Iraq. One of the first questions I asked him was what his orders had been. Was he ordered to “take Mosul,” I asked. No answer. How about “Find Mosul and report back”? No answer. Finally I asked him if his orders were something along the lines of “Go to Mosul!” He gave me an almost imperceptible nod. It must have been the first time an American combat infantry division had been ordered into battle so casually.

General Petraeus is very, very clever, which is quite different from stating that he is the brilliant tactician he has been described as. He figured if he hadn’t actually been given the mission to “win” the “war” he found himself in, he could at least look good in the meantime. And the truth is he did a lot of good things, like conceiving of the idea of basically buying the loyalties of various factions in Iraq. But they weren’t the kinds of things that win wars. In fact, they were the kinds of things that prolong wars, which for the general had the useful side effect of putting him on ever grander stages so he could be seen doing ever grander things, culminating in his appointment last year as the director of the C.I.A.

The thing he learned to do better than anything else was present the image of The Man You Turn To When Things Get Tough. (Who can forget the Newsweek cover, “Can This Man Save Iraq?” with a photo of General Petraeus looking very Princeton-educated in his Westy-starched fatigues?) He was so good at it that he conned the news media into thinking he was the most remarkable general officer in the last 40 years, and, by playing hard to get, he conned the political establishment into thinking that he could morph into Ike Part Deux and might one day be persuaded to lead a moribund political party back to the White House.

THE problem was that he hadn’t led his own Army to win anything even approximating a victory in either Iraq or Afghanistan. It’s not just General Petraeus. The fact is that none of our generals have led us to a victory since men like Patton and my grandfather, Lucian King Truscott Jr., stormed the beaches of North Africa and southern France with blood in their eyes and military murder on their minds.

Those generals, in my humble opinion, were nearly psychotic in their drive to kill enemy soldiers and subjugate enemy nations. Thankfully, we will probably never have cause to go back to those blood-soaked days. But we still shouldn’t allow our military establishment to give us one generation after another of imitation generals who pretend to greatness on talk shows and photo spreads, jetting around the world in military-spec business jets.

The generals who won World War II were the kind of men who, as it was said at the time, chewed nails for breakfast, spit tacks at lunch and picked their teeth with their pistol barrels. General Petraeus probably flosses. He didn’t chew nails and spit tacks, but rather challenged privates to push-up contests and went out on five-mile reveille runs with biographers.

His greatest accomplishment was merely personal: he transformed himself from an intellectual nerd into a rock star military man. The problem was that he got so lost among his hangers-on and handlers and roadies and groupies that he finally had his head turned by a West Point babe in a sleeveless top.

If only our political leadership, not to mention the Iraqi and Afghan insurgencies, had known how quickly and hard he would fall over such a petty, ignominious affair. Think of how many tens of thousands of lives could have been saved by ending those conflicts much earlier and sending Dave and his merry band of Doonesbury generals to the showers.

A novelist and journalist who is writing his new book on the blog Dying of a Broken Heart.

  President Obama Goes to Asia

 President Obama leaves on Saturday for a trip to Asia that will show his commitment to having the United States engage more intensely with countries there. But it comes at an awkward time. Israel and Hamas are at war in Gaza, and efforts to end the violence are demanding Mr. Obama’s attention. The Middle East is likely to remain a top priority, but he is right to also focus on Asia, where China’s growing assertiveness presents a challenge. 

The trip to Thailand, Myanmar and Cambodia should give President Obama a chance to expand on an approach to Asia that has been seen as too security-oriented at the expense of trade and economic matters. When he announced his pivot to Asia in 2011, it was a sign that the United States was not ceding anything to China. Since then, most of the attention has been on expanded military cooperation, including an agreement to base 2,500 Marines in Australia. The administration also promised to deploy 60 percent of its naval forces in the Pacific by 2020, up from about 50 percent today. The Washington Post reported on Friday that the Pentagon is training a counter terrorism battalion in Cambodia, though that country has not faced a serious militant threat in nearly a decade.

The White House says its new strategy toward Asia will focus on many fronts, including regional institutions, emerging democracies and trade relationships. Mr. Obama will be the first American president to visit Myanmar, which has made remarkable progress over the past two years in moving from military rule to a more open political system. But there is far to go. He should nudge authorities to release all political prisoners and end ethnic conflicts, especially with the Rohingya Muslims. Mr. Obama will attend the East Asia Summit in Cambodia, whose prime minister, Hun Sen, has ruled for two decades, resulting in countless killings and abuses, according to Human Rights Watch. Mr. Obama should speak forcefully about the importance of political reform and human rights.

Of course, security issues cannot be ignored when nationalism and growing mistrust among Asian nations are raising tensions and threatening regional economic progress. The most serious is the dispute between China and Japan over some small islands in the East China Sea, and the oil and gas resources around them, that some experts fear could result in violence.

In Cambodia, President Obama will have two scheduled bilateral meetings, one with the Chinese prime minister, Wen Jiabao, and another with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda of Japan. He should make a strong case to them to resolve their dispute. If prolonged or intensified, the consequences could be significant, impeding economic growth and regional stability.

Obama and India

Barack Obama’s re-election as United States president is welcome. Contrary to the views of some pro-US analysts and even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, a Republican win would have further widened class, race and ethnic rifts in America’s highly unequal society, strengthened a Rightward tilt in the domestic economy and international institutions, and set a jingoist tone for US foreign and security policy, with terrible consequences for the world, including South Asia.

Obama’s victory owes itself only partly to “positives” like his well-planned campaign, and “negatives” such as Mitt Romney’s crass “one percent” elitism, his repulsive remarks against the 47 percent of Americans who don’t pay federal income taxes, and his inability to attract non-white minorities and women.

Underlying the result is a much deeper change in America’s demography: a relative decline in the white population, and an increase in the populations of blacks, Spanish-speakers from Latin America and Asian-Americans. In the last decade, these groups accounted for an absolute majority of all births. The number of Asian-Americans and Hispanics rose by 43 percent, and blacks by 12 percent, but the white population only grew by under six percent.

This favours a new social coalition of non-white minorities, over 70 percent of whom voted for Obama. They were supported by women and pro-Democrat sentiment among a majority of university-educated people.

Hopefully, all this sets a long-term social-political trend which will potentially make for a less pro-rich, pro-corporate domestic policy and a less militarist foreign policy. This trend is of course welcome. But it won’t translate into major shifts immediately. Obama is likely to continue with his earlier policies, with minor changes and nuances.

The biggest change will be a further shift in the policy pivot towards Asia, in line with the shift in global power away from the North Atlantic. Early in his first term, Obama wooed China, and tried to coax Pakistan into a more cooperative relationship, while keeping India out of the core of his security architecture. However, he soon raised India’s profile. He visited India, hosted Manmohan Singh as the first foreign leader at the White House, and advocated a permanent seat for India on the UN Security Council.

Obama has since tried to rope in India, along with Japan and smaller Asian countries, to form a hedge against China, and encouraged it to play a major role in Afghanistan where a drawdown of US forces is under way. India has been cautious in not being seen as part of a “China containment” strategy. But India hasn’t really thought through its position, as it must.

India is under pressure to “cooperate” with the US to reduce tensions in the South China Sea, keep vital Asian sealanes peaceful, and isolate and coerce Iran into giving up her nuclear programme, although she has the right to pursue peaceful nuclear activities.

India must resist such pressure, while maintaining her foreign policy independence and strategic autonomy. India must not underestimate its leverage vis-a-vis the US. For instance, even as it pursues the imposition of heavy sanctions against Iran, Washington has had to accept that India will continue to import oil from Iran, albeit in reduced quantities. India can and should adopt positions that don’t tail the west on Syria, Palestine and Venezuela.

India can translate both its strategic weight and the tremendous goodwill it enjoys in Afghanistan to see that the US does not withdraw precipitously to leave behind a vacuum in which violent jihadi forces flourish. India should help build and train the Afghanistan National Army and police autonomously of the western powers, without getting into rivalry with Pakistan.

India is critically poised to repair its frayed relations with Pakistan and reach a historic rapprochement. Singh ought to visit Pakistan very soon to bring about a real breakthrough. That’s a high priority. Nothing, including short-term gains that might accrue through glitches in Washington’s relations with Islamabad, should be allowed to interfere with this agenda.

On the international canvas, India can play an important mediatory or facilitating role in resolving the crisis over Iran’s nuclear activities. Iran is probably still many months, if not a couple of years, away from producing enough enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb. According to US intelligence agencies, Iran hasn’t yet decided whether to acquire nuclear bombs.

India must take a firm stand against a military strike against Iran’s nuclear installations, which will be dangerously counterproductive. The futility or limited utility and extremely high risks of such an attack have become apparent even to hard-nosed hawks in the US and Israel.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans for an attack have been strongly opposed by many of his cabinet colleagues, and also by Israel’s security establishment, including serving army chief Benny Gantz, former Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin, and former Mossad head Meir Dagan, who called it “the stupidest idea” he had ever heard.

More than 30 former top US foreign policy-makers, experts and military officers have warned against an attack. They argue that an Israeli strike would delay Iran’s nuclear programme at best by two years. A much bigger US “military action involving aerial strikes, cyber-attacks, covert operations, and special operations forces would destroy or severely damage many of Iran’s physical facilities”. But their “complete destruction” is unlikely; and “Iran would still retain the scientific capacity and the experience to start its nuclear programme again ...”

A strike on Iran would produce a conflagration in the Middle East, which threatens US bases and Israel. It will create resentment greater than the American-engineered overthrow of elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. Worse, it would guarantee that Iran rapidly becomes a nuclear weapons-state.

Obama could be receptive to a diplomatic approach. After all, he refused to cave in to Netanyahu’s strident demands, risking the US Zionist lobby’s hostility. India should push Obama to translate the call he made in his acceptance speech for moving “beyond this time of war” into a major diplomatic initiative, including bilateral talks with Iran for the first time since 1979, which the White House says are “under consideration”. Iranian leaders are likely to respond to a non-coercive diplomatic initiative, and have indicated their willingness to mend relations with the US.

India should propose a compromise along the lines that Turkey and Brazil worked out in 2010: transferring Iran’s low-enriched uranium for further enrichment overseas, but capping domestic enrichment to non-weapons-grade levels. This was rejected then by the US, but has a better chance of being accepted now. India can thus reverse the damage it caused by repeatedly voting against Iran since 2005 at the International Atomic Energy Agency under Washington’s pressure.

This will help India rebuild its relations with Iran, with which it has traditionally had friendly ties, besides close relations in Afghanistan. India can then re-launch the Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline, which was abandoned under Washington’s pressure.

Many bilateral issues also need attention. India must reject the US demand for diluting the nuclear liability act to exempt equipment suppliers. The US is trying to pry open India’s defence production sector through joint ventures. There’s no justification for this. It’s one thing to have normal relations with a difficult power like the US; it’s quite another to get close to it.