Remember General David Petraeus? The guy who claimed that as soon as his brilliant comprehensive counterinsurgency strategy (COIN) was implemented in Afghanistan the US would emerge victorious? The “maverick savior of Iraq” as he was christened by neocon historian Viktor David Hanson?
Anyone notice how Iraq and Afghanistan are doing these days? As TAC’s Kelley Vlahos noticed recently, the once feverish pro-COIN blogs — then giddy with the discovery of new ways to remake the world — are “now-sluggish.”
After two colossal failures, Petraeus has crawled out from under his rock of shame to again take up the cause of war-promotion. Heartily endorsing President Obama’s request for authorization to use force on Syria, Petraeus betrays the real prize in the sights of the Syria war-promoters: Iran.
Writes Patraeus today:
“Failure of Congress to approve the president’s request would have serious ramifications not just in the Mideast but around the world. Military action against the Syrian regime is, thus, necessary not just to deter future use of chemical weapons in Syria and elsewhere, but also to ensure that Iran, North Korea and other would-be aggressors never underestimate the United States’ resolve to take necessary military action when other tools prove insufficient.”
The neoconservatives, world-remakers, ideologues, never give up. They cannot be shamed into silence by their professional incompetence and failure nor by their personal scandals. They are as shameless as they are consistently wrong.
Listen to Petraeus on Syria? No thank you. But, if he is trotted out to Hill offices next week, we may well see a few offices peeled off into the pro-war camp. Members don’t want to know that Afghanistan and Iraq have been failures. Even if they did, corporate media tend to not want to touch such bad news stories.
Being an interventionist means never having to say you are sorry.
Flickr/lauren victoria burke
