Can the general save the day?
NOT SINCE Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus was called from the plow to save the Romans from the obstreperous Aequians has a general been as keenly anticipated as David Howell Petraeus, who is now tasked with saving the Bush administration in Iraq. Bush supporters and hopers are saying: We know things look grim, and we know what you heard from all those other generals, but just wait for Petraeus. Just listen to Petraeus before you oppose the surge.
Cincinnatus fought the Aequians in 458 BC because they resisted Pax Romana. He defeated them in one day and then went back to his farm. Petraeus will be given a little more time than that, but not much. For everybody knows that public support for this war is folding, and this escalation is the last shuffle.
Cincinnatus was said to have embodied all the old Roman virtues of courage, fortitude, and simplicity. Petraeus may lack Cincinnatus's modesty, but he graduated near the top of his class at West Point, married the superintendent's daughter, acquired the patina of a Princeton doctorate, and co authored the new manual for countering insurgency.
Not, perhaps, since John Paul Vann, who seemed for a while to point toward a better way to victory in Vietnam, has a military man appealed so to the press. A Newsweek cover story in 2004 said: "Virtually everybody agrees his command (in Mosul) was a textbook case of doing counterinsurgency the right way. When troops went on cordon-and-search operations, they took care to tell each homeowner, 'Thank you for allowing us to search your home. . .' Posters were displayed in the 101st's barracks, saying, 'What have you done to win Iraqi hearts and minds today?' "
Petraeus graduated from West Point the year after American troops had left Vietnam, but his thesis at Princeton was on what lessons the Army drew from that disaster.
In retrospect, it is a tragedy that the Bush administration was so quick to ignore those lessons -- so quick to abandon the Powell Doctrine of overwhelming force right from the beginning, an exit strategy, and making sure of American public support. Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney were at President Ford's side when the final collapse of South Vietnam came in 1975. But the old hands in the Bush administration seem to have come to the wrong conclusions. They seem to have felt that we could have won that war, and that Iraq was a chance to get it right.
According to Bob Woodward, Henry Kissinger claimed that the "United States had essentially won in 1972, only to lose Vietnam because of weakened resolve by the public and Congress."
As for Iraq, writing in the International Herald Tribune, Kissinger calls for wider diplomacy, even to include Syria and Iran, but not withdrawal; neither "abrupt" nor "graduated."
In his book, "State of Denial," Bob Woodward wrote that Kissinger advised the White House: "Don't let it happen again. Don't give an inch, or else the media, the Congress and the American culture of avoiding hardship will walk you back . . . Partially withdrawing troops had its own dangers." Kissinger advised that "even entertaining the idea of withdrawing any troops could create momentum for an exit that was less than victory."
Clearly that was what Bush wanted to hear. The administration wouldn't abandon "stay the course," although it has discarded the phrase. So the administration asked for some new cards, doubled the Baghdad bet, and is hoping that David Petraeus has an ace or two up his sleeve.
But in all the debate about the surge, the negative effect of foreign troops on the Iraqi population has been underestimated. Petraeus himself has said that "any army of liberation has a certain half-life before it becomes an army of occupation." The American army in Iraq has long passed into the latter category, and "thank you for letting us search your house" isn't going to cut it.
Foreign troops crashing into homes is especially hurtful in the Arab world, and with Kurdish troops now coming to Baghdad to help with the surge, even more of the troops breaking in doors will, in effect, be foreign.
When Petraeus was in charge of training Iraqi troops, Newsweek said, he was the "closest thing to an exit strategy the United States now has." That's now so in spades. But it is hard to imagine this late in the game that General Petraeus can return home with Cincinnatus-like laurels having defeated the barbarians who oppose Pax Americana.
H.D.S. Greenway's column appears regularly in the Globe. 
