Re: Petraeus: Troop Surge Working To Lessen Death Toll in a Few Areas

On Aug 31, 2:56 pm, Joe Avelon <javalo...@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
America's troop surge in Iraq has sharply reduced sectarian
killings and roadside bombings and lowered al-Qaida's
influence, the top U.S. general in the country said in an
interview published Friday.

"We say we have achieved progress, and we are obviously going
to do everything we can to build on that progress and we
believe al-Qaida is off balance at the very least," The
Australian newspaper quoted Gen. David Petraeus as saying.

Petraeus said there had been a 75 percent drop in ethnic and
religious killings since last year, a doubling in the number
of seizures of insurgent weapons caches between January and
August, a drop in the number of coalition deaths from roadside
bombs, and an increase in the killing and capture of al-Qaida
fighters, the newspaper said.

If we're very lucky or even a little smart, we aren't going to
depend on an Australian newspaper and one general to determine U.S.
foreign policy and the disposition of the remaining fraction of the
U.S. treasury. A very smart man in another forum, compared Iraq and
Vietnam this way:

"And another similarity: the misconception of "listening to the
generals".
In the military structure, only good news goes upward (in a business
structure, only bad news goes upward). The military term for this is
"*** floats".
The generals in Vietnam got nothing but positive reports,
except from the press. They had their surges, and wanted more. For
them, the war was one surge away from success. To them, the press was
not reporting the good news of the war, only the bad. Finally, the
Commander-in-Chief stopped listening to the generals and negotiated
the Paris Peace Accord.
General George Washington, General U.S. Grant, and General
Dwight Eisenhower recognized their duty to listen to the people and to
their elected representatives. None of them sought policy guidance
from "the generals", nor does the hood ornament on a Cadillac serve
much anymore as a steering and navigational tool."

-snip-

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