What did we learn from General Petreaus this week? As expected, perhaps, we learned less about the future of Iraq than we did about the future of this year's presidential campaigns.
McCain's lackluster showing at the hearing was revealing. His end statement, "Congress must not choose to lose in Iraq...." was beyond foolish. It was such political shorthand that it it could only be properly categorized with his growing catalog of "jet-lagged" (ie, leading) mis-speakings. As Fred Kaplan put it at Slate, "...as if anyone calling for troop cutbacks is a defeatist and as if Congress' choice has much to do with the ultimate outcome."
As is becoming increasingly the case, if you're looking for a genuine read on what the Republican presidential nominee actually meant or how he will eventually come to think, best to turn to his proxies, and in this case the man who has literally had his ear: Joe Lieberman.
Liebermann's fawning "questions" for the general were dissected / lampooned by Justin Linkins for the HuffPost almost as they tumbled from the senator's lips. His performance would have been comic if only it didn't concern an ongoing mess of a war. The logic underpinning this enormous issue for Lieberman is as simple as it is untenable. In his mind, it seems, anything that could be called progress, in any area, is worth our remaining in Iraq, with full surge-level forces or more. To do less would be giving up on success!
Problem is that if your goal is to actually win the race, not crashing your car just isn't good enough, which was the point Obama was making in his questions to the general. We're not trying to wipe out every member of al-Qaeda, he prompted. We're not hoping to erase Iran's influence. How effective a government are we trying to install? In effect: What country will Iraq look like when we're done?
Obama, like everyone else, including of course the soldiers on the ground, wanted to know what we're trying to achieve, if for no other reason, so we can know how to measure success.
If the measure of success is Lieberman's "any progress at all," then that is simply an extension of the muddled, amorphous and unarticulated Bush plan, which is basically a stall, the Big Pause, where the only thing Congress will be choosing, to use McCain's mocking phrase, is to force General Petraeus and his successors to come before us to pose the same kind of stone-faced riddles once a year indefinitely.
Poll after poll tells us which approach to Iraq the American people are more sympathetic toward. We're with Obama. But, as Dick Cheney says, "so." What we want hasn't meant a whole lot in the last eight years. Question is will McCain and is special advisor Lieberman be able to sell us, or a slim majority of us, on the Big Pause?