GENERAL David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker gave few illuminating answers during their two days of testimony to Congress. Again and again, the lawmakers and the two highest-ranking American officials in Iraq talked past each other.
The soldier and the diplomat could not say what victory would look like in Iraq, nor even what the criteria for success should be. They would not predict what will happen after they conduct a 45-day assessment, beginning in July, of a planned force reduction to 140,000 troops. They could offer no satisfactory description of American interests in Iraq, no clear projection of attainable goals, and no exit strategy.
Republicans as well as Democrats gave vent to their constituents' anger about the costs of the war. These include more than 4,000 Americans killed, tens of thousands maimed and wounded, a financial toll reckoned in hundreds of billions of dollars, and a geopolitical outcome that has made adversaries stronger and allies less secure. Republican Senator George Voinovich of Ohio tartly captured the public's frustration, saying, "The American people have had it up to here."
The euphemisms and evasions that Petraeus and Crocker offered made it clear President Bush will leave the final act of the Iraq tragedy to his successor. Petraeus implied there will be no substantial withdrawal of troops before 2009. So the next president will bear the messy, humiliating task of extracting US forces - and will take the blame for whatever befalls Iraqis afterward.
Beyond domestic politics and presidential blame-shifting, the unreality that pervaded the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker grew out of their inability - or reluctance - to account for the political and humanitarian conditions inside Iraq. Petraeus has been implementing counter-insurgency tactics. But apart from the badly battered remnants of Al Qaeda in Iraq, there is no American war against Iraqi insurgents.
Instead, sectarian militias - which include the national police dominated by followers of the anti-American Shi'ite cleric Muqtada Sadr - are sharpening their knives, waiting for US forces to leave, and preparing to wage bloody battles for power. The recent assault on Sadr's forces in Basra was a foreshadowing of power struggles that will erupt not only between Shi'ites and Sunni Arabs, but between opposing factions in each community, and also between Kurds and Arabs in northern Iraq.
None of these impending civil wars is a conflict America can win. And there is little evidence that the continuing US presence is bringing any of them closer to a solution.
