Last night at FDL I was pretty hard on this David Ignatius op-ed. And I regret nothing! But there is one thing that he gets right that is worth highlighting:
Future military planners will have to recognize that American democracy, in which political mandates must be renewed in two-year increments, makes us uniquely unsuited to fight protracted counterinsurgency wars. Petraeus likes to observe that it takes, on average, at least nine years to prevail in such a war. If that measure is correct, Petraeus must know there is little chance that a frustrated and angry American public will grant him enough time for success.
Yeah, you'd think this pretty obvious point might have occurred to the General. I know we're all supposed to genuflect whenever Petraeus's Military Genius is invoked, but you know, given political realities and his own ideas, there is just no way anything he's doing over there can possibly work.
Of course in the US we have seen that simply because the vast majority of the population opposes the war, that doesn't mean it will end anytime soon. But still, I don't think anyone promising eight more years of war at best is going to win anything. And even if I'm totally wrong about that I am even more confident in assuming that there is no way the Iraqis are at all interested in that kind of a timeframe.
So, assuming democracy means anything at all, Petreaus is undertaking a plan that he has to know cannot succeed. Somehow this conclusion brings me remarkably little joy.