General Petraeus: President Ahmadinejad and other Iranian leaders promised to end their support for the special groups but the nefarious activities of the Quds Force have continued.
Senator Joseph Lieberman: Is it fair to say that the Iranian-backed special groups are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians?
General Petraeus: It certainly is… That is correct.
— General Petraeus testimony to the US Senate, April 8-9, 2008.
‘The Israeli flag is proudly displayed above the Sacred Ark alongside the American flag…’ ( in an orthodox synagogue in wealthy Georgetown, Washington DC. The entrance fee to the synagogue is $1000 for a single holiday.) ‘On each Sabbath the prayers include the benediction for the Israeli Jewish soldiers and the prayer for the welfare of the Israeli government and its officials. Many Jewish American Administration pray there. They not only don’t try to conceal their religious affiliation, but go to great lengths to demonstrate their Judaism since it may help their careers greatly. The enormous Jewish influence in Washington is not limited to the government. In the Washingtonian, media’s a very significant part of the most important personages and of the presenters of the most popular programs on the TV are warm Jews… and let us not forget, in this context, the Jewish predominance in the Washingtonian academic institutions.’
— Avinoam Bar-Yosef (the Israeli daily newspaper) Ma’riv September 2, 1994 (translated by Israel Shahak).
Introduction
When President Bush appointed General David Petraeus Commander (head) of the Multinational Forces in Iraq, his appointment was hailed by the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post as a brilliant decision: A general of impeccable academic and battlefield credentials and a warrior and counter-insurgency (terrorist) intellectual. The media and the President, the Republicans and Democrats in the Senate and Congress, described his appointment as ‘America’s last best hope for salvation in Iraq’. Senator Hilary Clinton joined the chorus of pro-war politicians in praise and support of Petraeus’ ‘professionalism and war record’ in Northern Iraq. In contrast, Admiral William Fallon, his predecessor and former commander, had called Petraeus’ briefings ‘a piece of brown-nosing chicken shit.’
In theory and strategy, in pursuit of defeating the Iraqi resistance, General Petraeus was a disastrous failure, an outcome predictable from the very nature of his appointment and his flawed wartime reputation.
In the first instance, Petraeus was a political appointment. He was one of the few high military officials who shared Bush and the Zioncons’ assessment that the ‘war could be won.’ Petraeus argued that his experience in Northern Iraq were replicable throughout the rest of the country. Moreover Petraeus, unlike most military analysts, was willing to ignore the heavy costs of multiple prolonged tours of duty on US troops. Petraeus’ willingness to ignore the larger costs of prolonged military engagement in Iraq has weakened the capacity of the US to sustain its world-wide imperial interests. For Petraeus, sacrificing the overall cohesion and structure of the US military in Iraq, the global interests of the empire and the US domestic budget were worth securing Bush’s appointment as Commander of the Forces in Iraq. Shortly after taking office and in the face of massive domestic, international and Iraq demands for the withdrawal of US troops, Petraeus took the path dictated by the US and pro Israeli militarists in the Bush Administration and their powerful ‘Lobby.’ He escalated the war, by calling up more troops, what he euphemistically referred to as ‘the surge’ — a massive call-up of 40,000 more mission-weary infantry and marines.
An analysis and critique of the failure of military-driven imperialism and its militarily dangerous consequences requires an objective critical analysis of Petraeus’ media-inflated military record prior to taking command. Equally important Petraeus close ideological and political linkages with Israel’s militarist approach toward Iran (and the rest of the Middle East countries opposing it) dates back to his close collaboration with Israel’s (unofficial) military advisers and intelligence operatives in Kurdish Northern Iraq.
Petraeus’ Phony Success in Northern Iraq
Petraeus’ vaunted military successes in Northern Iraq — especially in Nineveh province in Northern Iraq was based on the fact that it is dominated by the Kurdish warlord tribal leaders and party bosses eager to carve an independent country. The relative stability of the region has little or nothing to do with Petraeus’ counter-insurgency theories or policies and more to do with the high degree of Kurdish ‘independence’ or ‘separatism’ in the region. Put bluntly, the US and Israeli military and financial backing of Kurdish separatism has created a de facto independent Kurdish state, one based on the brutal ethnic purging of large concentrations of Turkmen and Arab citizens. General Petraeus, by giving license to Kurdish irredentist aspirations for an ethnically purified ‘Greater Kurdistan,’ encroaching on Turkey, Iran and Syria, secured the loyalty of the Kurdish militias and especially the deadly Peshmerga ‘special forces’ in eliminating resistance to the US occupation in Nineveh. Moreover, the Peshmerga has provided the US with special units to infiltrate the Iraqi resistance groups, and to provoke intra-communal strife through incidents of terrorism against the civilian population. In other words, General Petreaus’ ‘success’ in Northern Iraq is not replicable in the rest of Iraq. In fact, his very success in carving off Kurd-dominated Iraq has heightened hostilities in the rest of the country and provoked Turkish attacks in the region.
Petraeus: Armchair Strategist
His theory of ‘securing and holding’ territory presumes a highly motivated and reliable military force capable of withstanding hostility from at least eighty percent of the colonized population. Petraeus, like Bush and the Zionist militarists, ignores the fact that the morale of US soldiers in Iraq and those scheduled to be sent to Iraq is very low. The ranks of those who are seeking a quick exit from military service now include career soldiers and non-commissioned officers — the backbone of the military.
If the US troops are deeply troubled by the war in Iraq and increasingly subject to desertion and demoralization, how less reliable is the Iraqi mercenary army? Iraqis recruited on the basis of hunger and unemployment (caused by the US war), with kinship, ethnic and national ties to a free and independent Iraq do not make reliable soldiers. Every serious expert has concluded that the divisions in Iraqi society are reflected in the loyalties of the soldiers. The attempt by Petraeus and US puppet Prime Minister Maliki to invade Basra in Southern Iraq turned into a military fiasco as thousands of Iraqi soldiers joined the insurgents.
General Petraeus could not count on his Iraqi troops because scores were defecting and perhaps thousands will in the future. An empty drill field, or worse a widespread barracks revolt, is a credible scenario. The continued high casualty rates among US soldiers and Iraqi civilians, during his 18 months as Commander suggests that ‘holding and securing’ Baghdad failed to alter the overall situation.
While the addition of 30,000 US troops saturating Baghdad initially reduced civilian and military casualties there, fighting intensified in other regions and cities. More important, the decline of violence had less to do with Petraeus’ ‘surge’ and had more to do with the temporary political cease-fire reached with the anti-occupation forces of Muqtada al Sadr. This was clear when the US and its client Prime Minister Maliki launched an offensive against Sadr’s forces in March-April 2008 and casualties shot up, and even the US ‘Green Zone bunker’ came under daily rocket attacks. After 18 months under Commander Petraeus, the Iraqi troops showed little willingness to fight their own compatriots engaged in resistance. Thousands turned their arms over to the anti-colonial popular militias and several hundreds joined them
Petraeus ‘rule book’ prioritizes “security and task sharing as a means of empowering civilians and prompting national reconciliation.” ‘Security’ is elusive because what the US Commander considers ‘security’ is the free movement of US troops and collaborators based on the insecurity of the colonized Iraqi majority. They continue to subject the civilian Iraqis to arbitrary house-to-house searches, break-ins and humiliating searches and arrests.
While the death toll of civilians declined from ‘hundreds a day’ to ‘hundreds a week,’ it demonstrated Petraeus’ failure to achieve his most elementary goal. Task Sharing as defined by Petraeus and his officers is a euphemism for Iraqi collaboration in ‘administrating’ his orders. ‘Sharing’ involves a highly asymmetrical relation of power: the US orders and the Iraqis comply. Petraeus defines the ‘task’ as informing on insurgents. The Iraqi population is supposed to provide ‘information’ on their families, friends and compatriots, in other words betray their own people. The concept sounded more feasible in his manual than in practice. US troops still are ambushed on a daily basis and insurgents, operating among the population, bomb their armored carriers.
‘Empowering civilians,’ another prominent concept in Petraeus’ manual, assumed that those who ‘empower’ give up power to the ‘others.’ In other words, that the US military cedes territory, security, financial resource management and allocation to a colonized people or to the local armed forces. During his 18 months in command, it is the ‘empowered’ people who protect and support insurgents and oppose the US occupation and its puppet regime. In fact, what Commander Petraeus really meant was ‘empowering’ a small minority of civilians who were willing collaborators of an occupying army. They were frequently the deadly target of the insurgents. The civilian minority ‘empowered’ by the Petraeus formula requires heavy US military protection to withstand retaliation. In practice no neighborhood civilian collaborators have been delegated real power and those who were delegated authority, are dead, hiding or secretly allied with the resistance.
Petraeus’ goal of ‘national reconciliation’ has been a total failure. The Iraqi regime is paralyzed into squabbling sects and warlords. Reconciliation between warring parties is not on the horizon. What Petraeus fails to recognize, but even his puppet allies publicly state, is that US colonization of Iraq is a blatant denial of the conditions for reconciliation. Commander Petraeus and his army and the dictates of the Zionist White House play off the warring parties undermining any negotiation toward ‘conciliation.’ Like all preceding colonial commanders, Petraeus fails to recognize that Iraqi popular sovereignty is the essential precondition for national reconciliation and stability. Military imposed ‘reconciliation’ among warring collaborator groups with no legitimacy among the Iraqi electorate has been a disaster.
Former Clintonite, Sarah Sewall (ex-Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and Harvard-based ‘foreign affairs expert’) was ecstatic over Petraeus’ appointment. Yet she claimed the ‘inadequate troop to task ratio’ would undermine his strategy.
Petraeus’ prescriptions borrowed heavily from the Vietnam War era, especially General Creighton Abram’s Clear and Hold counter-insurgency doctrine. Abrams ordered a vast campaign of chemical warfare spraying of thousands of hectares with the deadly Agent Orange to ‘clear’ contested terrain. He approved of the Phoenix Plan — the systematic assassination of 25,000 village leaders to ‘clear’ out local insurgents. Abrams implemented the program of ‘strategic hamlets,’ the forced re-location of millions of Vietnamese peasants into concentration camps. In the end, Abram’s plans to ‘clear and hold’ failed because each measure extended and deepened popular hostility and increased the number of recruits to the Vietnamese national liberation army. Israel’s brutal occupation policies in the West Bank have followed the same strategy with equally disastrous results, which doesn’t prevent its advisers from selling it to the US military.
Petraeus is following the Abrams-Israeli doctrine with the same disastrous civilian casualties. Large-scale bombing of densely populated Shia and Sunni neighborhoods has taken place since he took command. Mass arrests of suspected local leaders accompanied by the tight military encirclement of entire neighborhoods. Arbitrary, abusive house-to-house searches turn the poor sectors of Baghdad into one big shooting gallery and concentration camp. Paraphrasing his predecessor, General Creighton Abrams, Petraeus wants to ‘destroy Iraq in order to save it.’ In fact his policy is merely punishing the civilians and deepening the hostility of the population. In contrast, the insurgents blend into the huge slum neighborhood of Sadr City population or into the surrounding provinces of Al-Anbar, Diyala, and Salah and Din. Petraeus was able to ‘hold’ a people hostage with armored vehicles but he has not been able to rule with guns. The failure of General Creighton Abrams was not due to the lack of ‘political will’ in the US, as he complained, but was due to the fact that ‘clearing’ a region of insurgents is temporary, because the insurgency is founded on its capacity to blend in with the people and then re-emerge to fight the occupation army.
Petraeus’ fundamental (and false) assumptions are based on the notion that the ‘people’ and the ‘insurgents’ are two distinct and opposing groups. He assumed that his ground forces and Iraqi mercenaries could distinguish and exploit this divergence and ‘clear out’ the insurgents and ‘hold’ the people. The four-year history of the US invasion, occupation and imperial war, including his 18 months in command, provides ample evidence to the contrary. With upward of 170,000 US troops and close to 200,000 Iraqi and over 50,000 foreign mercenaries, Petraeus has failed to defeat the insurgency. The evidence points to very strong, extensive and sustained civilian support for the insurgency. The high ratio of civilian to insurgent killings by the combined US-mercenary armies suggests that US troops have not been able to distinguish (nor are interested in the difference) between civilians and insurgents. Even the puppet government complains of civilian killings and widespread destruction of popular neighborhoods by US aerial bombing. The insurgency draws strong support from extended kin ties, neighborhood friends and neighbors, religious leaders, nationalists and patriots: these primary, secondary and tertiary ties bind the insurgency to the population in a way which can not be replicated by the US military or its puppet politicians.
Early on, General Petraeus’ plan to ‘protect and secure the civilian population’ was a failure. He flooded the streets of Baghdad with armored vehicles but was quickly forced to acknowledge that the ‘anti-government… forces were regrouping north of the capital.’ Petraeus was condemned to play what Lt. General Robert Gaid un-poetically called ‘whack-a-mole: Insurgents will be suppressed in one area only to re-emerge somewhere else.’
General Petraeus made the presumptuous assertion that the Iraqi civilian population did not know that the ‘special operations’ forces of the Occupation, which he directed, is responsible for fomenting much of the ethno-religious conflict. Investigative reporter Max Fuller in his detailed examination of documents, stressed that the vast majority of atrocities… attributed to ‘rogue’ Shiite or Sunni militias “were in fact the work of government-controlled commandos of ‘special forces,’ trained by the Americans, ‘advised’ by Americans and run largely by former CIA agents.”
In theory, Petraeus recognized the broader political context of the war: “There is no military solution to a problem like that in Iraq, to the insurgency… In Iraq, military action is necessary to help improve security… but it is insufficient. There needs to be a political aspect.”
The gap between Petraeus’ ‘theoretical’ discourse on the centrality of politics and his practice of prioritizing military victory can be explained by his desire to please the Bush-Zioncons in Washington in order to advance his own military career (and future political ambitions). The result was an exceptionally mediocre military performance, underwritten by dismal political failures and the achievement of his personal ambitions.
In April 2008, the Bush Administration named Petraeus as head of the US Central Command, overseeing the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and the rest of the Horn of Africa. Petraeus replaced Navy Admiral William Fallon who was forced to resign his command by the White House and the Zioncons over his opposition to their war plans against Iran. Even prior to his retirement, Fallon had expressed his contempt for Petraeus’ shameful truckling to the Zionists in Northern Iraq and the Bush Know Nothings in charge of Iraq and Iran policy planning. It is clear that Petraeus ensured his promotion on April 16, 2008, through his senate testimony, one week earlier (April 8-9, 2008) with his bellicose speech implicating Iran in the fighting deaths of US troops in Iraq. With the purge and intimidation of military officials not willing to act as White House/Zionist poodles, Petraeus had few competitors. Petraeus’ promotion to the top military post, just days after his senate testimony pointing to war with Iran could not be attributed to his (failed) military performance, but to his slavish adherence to Bush’s and Israel’s push for heightened confrontation with Iran. Blaming Iran for his failed military policies served a double purpose: it covered up his incompetence and it secured the support of leading Zionist Senators like Joseph Lieberman.
Petraeus reference to the “need to engage in talks with some groups of insurgents” fell on deaf ears. His proposal was seen by the insurgents as a continuation of the divide and conquer (or ‘salami’) tactics. The only ‘talks’ Petraeus secured were with tribal leaders who demanded millions of dollars up front. Otherwise he failed to attract any sector of the insurgency. Petraeus proved to be an armchair tactician, wise on public relations ‘techniques,’ but mediocre in coming to grips with the ‘decolonization’ political framework in which tactics might work.
Petraeus Double Discourse
Commander Petraeus was quick to grasp the difficulty of his colonial mission. Just a month after taking command, he engaged in the same sophistry and double discourse of any colonial general confronted with an unwinable war. To keep the flow of funds and troops from Washington he talked of the “reduction of killings and discontent in Baghdad,” cleverly omitting the increase of civilian and US deaths elsewhere. He mentioned ‘a few encouraging signs’ but also admitted that it is ‘too early to discern significant trends.’
From the beginning Petraeus gave himself an open-ended mission by extending the time frame to secure Baghdad. He shifted the goal posts from days and weeks to ‘months’ and years. Playing with indefinite time frames in which to evaluate his performance, was a coy way to prepare the US public for prolonged warfare — with few positive results. There is nothing like a failed general acting as a political panderer covering his ass in anticipation of military defeat.
As a military intellectual, Petraeus surely has read George Orwell’s 1984 because he was so fluent in double-speak. In one breath he spoke of “no immediate need to request more US troops to be sent to Iraq,” on the other he called for 30,000 additional troops as part of what he called ‘the surge.’ In March 2008, he spoke of big advances in security and one month later he demanded a ‘pause’ because the puppet regime and army were not capable of defending themselves without US backing.
Petraeus’ political manipulation of troop numbers and his blatant lies about the security situation in Iraq prepared the ground for a greater military escalation in the region. “Right now we do not see other requests (for troops) looming out there. That’s not to say that some emerging mission or emerging task will not require that, and if it does then we will ask for that.” [my emphasis]
Petraeus Political Ambitions
The General is a fine master of ‘double speak.’ Yet despite superb media performances before his colleagues in the White House and Congress, Petraeus’ military strategy is doomed to go down the same road of political-military defeat as his predecessors in Indo-China. His military police have jailed tens of thousands of civilians and killed and injured many more. They were interrogated, tortured and perhaps some were ‘broken.’ But many more took their place turning the Green Zone into a war zone under siege. Petraeus’ real security policy through intimidation ‘held’ only as long as the armored cars patrolled each neighborhood, pointing their cannons at every building. That proved to be a temporary solution. As soon as the troops moved on, the insurgents returned. The insurgents re-emerge after a week because they live and work there, whereas the Marines do not and neither do the Iraqi collaborators dare. Petraeus ran a costly colonial army, which suffers endless casualties and is not politically sustainable. Petraeus knows that, so he chose a political route upward and out of immediate command in Iraq, shifting the burden for failure to his replacement Lieutenant General Ray Odierno.
General Petraeus realized his long-term political ambitions exceeded his military abilities. Militarism is a stepping-stone to a higher post in Washington. Since only winning generals or draft dodgers are elected President, Petraeus, like McCain, must present failure as success.
In his Senate testimony of April 8-9, 2008, Petraeus lied to Congress and the American people about the US military failures, fabricating accounts of progress, in order to bolster the sagging fortunes of his political patron, President Bush. His Senate testimony and press conferences were designed to bolster Bush’s total loss of credibility: he claimed that the war was being won, Iraq was stabilized, security and peace were ‘around the corner’ and that we should go to war with Iran.
If the media uncritically swallowed Petraeus testimony, the public didn’t and a host of former generals and admirals were chagrined, embarrassed and outraged that he was advancing his career by sucking up to President Bush and Israel at the expense of the troops serving under him.
Petraeus Panders to Israel’s Fifth Column: The Iran Threat
By the spring of 2008, as the war turned from bad to worse, as the insurgency grew in power and his leadership and strategy was transparently a sham, Petraeus played his last formidable political card. To sustain his position and cover up his defeats in Basra, and his inability to lower US casualties or even defend the Green Zone, he blamed Iran. It was Petraeus who charged Iranian weapons were blowing up US armored carriers; Iranian agents were training the Iraqi resistance and defeating his army of 200,000 Iraqi collaborators. Petraeus could not face the fact that he was losing Iraq. He deflected attention from the failure of his entire military-political strategy in Iraq by dragging in Iran as a key military player.
In pointing to Iran, Petraeus played the dangerous game of echoing the Israeli line and providing support for a military attack on Iran promoted by the leadership of the Major American Jewish Organizations.
Even while Petraeus was covering up his failure by blaming Iran, the Iraqi puppet government was praising the Iranian government for helping to stabilize the country, using its influence on the Shia militias to hold their fire. Puppet Prime Minister Maliki invited the Iranian President to Baghdad, signed trade agreements and praised their co-operation and efforts to stabilize the country.
The only organized group, which took up Petraeus’, campaign to blame Iran for the US defeats was the Zionist Power Configuration in the US. In the Congress, media and public forums, Zionists amplified and backed Petraeus. They see him as a critical ally in countering the National Intelligence Report absolving Iran of having a program to develop nuclear weapons. No other high military commander, in Europe or the US, took up Petraeus call to arms against Iran… except the Israeli military command. It is a sad commentary on the state of the US military when generals advance to the highest posts by flattering and propagandizing for the most discredited American president in memory and advance the agenda of power brokers for a foreign power.
General Petraeus, in his advance from Commander of US and ‘allied’ forces in Iraq to head of the US Central Command overseeing current US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and overseeing future wars with Iran, Lebanon and Syria, has left behind a bitter legacy of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilian deaths, an unreliable Iraqi ‘quisling’ army, a failed client regime and a vast US bunker under constant attack. Every military official and most experts know that he was ‘Bush’s man’ and his advances were very much a product of the White House and its pro-Israel backers in the Congress.
Conclusion
The advance of Petraeus is a victory of the Zionist Power Configuration in its quest for American military leaders willing to pursue Israel’s agenda of sanctions and war against Iran. That is why the ZPC was a factor in the ousting of Admiral William Fallon, and why the main propaganda bulletin (the Daily Alert) of the Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations worked for and hailed his promotion to military overseer of the Middle East wars. AIPAC and their bought and bonded Senators ensured Petraeus an easy time during his confirmation hearing and his unanimous endorsement. His appointment marks the first time that the Zionist Power Configuration has trumped the views and opinions of the majority of active and retired American military officers. How far Petraeus will go in ‘paying back’ his debt to his long-term Zionist backers for his meteoric rise remains to be seen. What is certain is that they will demand that he line up with the State of Israel in pushing forth toward a war with Iran.
It is neither military honor, nor patriotism, which will restrain Petraeus from pursuing the Zionist War for Israel agenda — but his future presidential ambitions. He will have to calculate whether a second Middle East war, which will please Israel and billionaire American (?) Zionist political fundraisers can offset voter discontent resulting from a war in which the price of oil will rise to $300 dollars a barrel and cost several tens of thousands of American casualties, will further his political ambitions.
The US has degenerated into a sorry state of affairs when its future course depends on the political calculus of a feckless General, a failed counter-insurgency ‘expert’ and ambitious politician pandering to billionaire political contributors working for a foreign colonial power.