Duel of the Machiavellians: Obama vs. Petraeus, who has close Israel-neocon ties

Stephen Sniegoski
While Obama is often portrayed as a political neophyte finding himself confronting situations that are way over his head, his choice of General David H. Petraeus to replace General  Stanley A. McChrystal was in some ways a masterful political stroke, though it does not seem to have achieved  all that might  have been intended.

Obama’s move has nothing to do with any effort to maintain a “winning” strategy in Afghanistan.  No realistic person could even conceive of how the US could “win” in Afghanistan.  In fact, it would not seem  that the central purpose of Obama’s escalation of the US war in Afghanistan in 2009 had to do with “winning,” either, since unlike his political predecessor, Obama actually gives the appearance of knowing what is going on.  Rather, Obama’s purpose is fundamentally a political one:  preventing, or at least limiting, political damage from the war in Afghanistan.

Obama sees the political need to manoeuvre between the positions of the war hawks and the advocates of peace with whom he largely agrees. Political considerations largely determine how Obama acts regarding Afghanistan, and about almost everything else he does. (All successful US politicians generally act in that manner.)  If he were to base his action on his personal view of the merits of the issue, it seems likely that Obama would opt for peace and pull the troops out of Afghanistan.  As antiwar critic Sheldon Richman writes in his article “Endless Occupation?” (June 29, 2010): “Obama presumably would like to get out – he can’t be thrilled about presiding over America’s longest war – but the cross-currents may leave him no choice but to tread water. The military wants to ‘win,’ whatever that means, while the Right is ready to pounce on Obama as an appeaser of terrorists if he acknowledges the reality of this inglorious war. (Al-Qaeda has moved on.)”

Obama’s  right-wing critics constantly characterize his foreign policy as one of weakness,  and it is this notion that Obama goes all out to dispel, fearing that, if this view caught on among the general public, it would do significant political harm to him among the moderate swing voters, upon whose support he must rely.   On the other hand,  peace voters will continue to support Obama even if he differs with their position at times, because the Republicans advocate a harder-line war position, and voting for a pro-peace minor party is generally considered a wasted vote.

Thus in the 2008 presidential campaign, Obama  held that it was necessary to more vigorously prosecute the war in Afghanistan to offset his reference to Iraq as the wrong war, showing that he was not averse to using military force per se.   And in his escalation of the war in Afghanistan, Obama seemed to be choosing a much safer target for his demonstration of strength than the war hawks’ desired war on Iran.

Just as Obama  intensified the war in Afghanistan to protect his own political image, the purpose of his replacement of McChrystal by Petraeus is also to serve his political interests.  The publicity given to the bombshell article in the magazine “Rolling Stone” on McChrystal and his staff, with their derogatory remarks about members of the Obama administration,  placed the president on the horns of a  dilemma.  If he did nothing, allowing McChrystal to remain as head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the media would likely imply that he was weak and indecisive and thus incapable of leading the military.

However, if Obama dismissed McChrystal, a noted expert in  counterinsurgency warfare, he would have been castigated for removing the best man for the job in order to salve his own pride.  As conditions deteriorated further in Afghanistan, as they are most likely to do, it would be Obama, not McChrystal’s replacement,  who would bear the brunt of the blame.

The choice of Petraeus as McChrystal’s replacement was, or at least seemed at the time,  a stroke of pure genius that solved this dilemma.  Petraeus, who will step down from his higher position as commander of CENTCOM (United States Central Command), was the only possible replacement who would not seem to be less capable than McChrystal.  For Petraeus is widely credited for solving what is generally regarded as a similar problematic  situation in Iraq with the surge and is the author of the military’s current counterinsurgency doctrine.

Now those few who have actually studied the situation in Iraq know that there has not been a real solution.  The rationale for the surge was that improved security would provide the opportunity for the central government in Iraq to work for national reconciliation among the major factions-Kurds, Sunnis, and Shiites.  This  clearly did not take place. What the surge actually achieved was temporary pacification-in large part due to the bribing of Sunni sheiks to stop their attacks.  Serious ethnic and religious tensions remain, which are apt to explode at any time,  and the level of actual violence has recently been on the upswing.

In choosing Petraeus, Obama also may have also thought he had found a way to derail a serious political rival.  Petraeus has looked like a possible contender in the 2012 election.  By sending him to Afghanistan, Obama has made his candidacy more difficult. In the words of commentator Tunku Varadarajan:  “Obama has, at a stroke, taken Petraeus out of the 2012 presidential race.”

Varadarajan continues: “Keep your friends close-and the competition closer. There has been a buzz about Petraeus and the presidency since about the fall of last year, and to many in the Republican Party-a party bereft of ideas and credible leaders-the general has increasingly taken on the aspect of a possible messiah. His impeccable military credentials, his undoubted intelligence, his mastery of personal and professional politics . . . plus his undoubted (if carefully tailored) conservatism have led many to see in him a man who can take on Obama in 2012, and beat him. He is even the sort of guy who’d allow the GOP to broaden its tent, drawing in ‘undecideds’ and independents.”

It should be noted that Petraeus has support from both the Republican Right–especially the neoconservatives–and from the general public. For the neocons, Petraeus serves as a replacement for John McCain. Petraeus was the recipient of  the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute’s highest honor for 2010, the Irving Kristol Award.  There was a statement in a military document  attributed to Petraeus that held that  Israel’s actions were exacerbating American casualties in the Middle East, but neocon stalwart Max Boot absolved Petraeus of any criticism of Israel in this instance. See Boot, “A Lie: David Petraeus, Anti-Israel”

As Petraeus’ recently revealed email correspondence indicates, the general had close ties to Boot, whom he relied upon to maintain a good relationship with pro-Israeli Jewish Americans.  In an email to Boot, written after the publication of Petraeus’ alleged statement about the negative impact of Israel on US forces,  Petraeus asked: “Does it help if folks know that I hosted Elie Wiesel and his wife at our quarters last Sun night?  And that I will be the speaker at the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camps.”  Boot, acting as if he understood the collective mind of the American Jewish community,  assured Petraeus that this additional obeisance was unnecessary.  It must be stressed that this correspondence indicated that Petraeus’ has not only close ties to a neocon journalist but also high political aspirations; and that he perceives the pro-Israel American Jewish community to be very powerful politically.


While Petraeus is close to neocons, his political strength stems from the fact that, like Dwight D. Eisenhower,  he is seen to be above partisan politics, as political commentator Peter Beinart has pointed out in his article, “Petraeus for President?”

The Senate’s  unanimous vote on June 30, 2010, to confirm Petraeus as the next commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan illustrates his widespread support, which transcends political ideology.  This broad appeal distinguishes Petraeus from leading Republican political figures such as Sarah Palin, who have strong appeal on the Right, but little support, and much opposition, beyond this ideological segment.

But if Petraeus wanted to run for President, why didn’t  he just refuse Obama’s offer to command the troops in Afghanistan and say that there was more pressing work to be done at CENTCOM? In the military hierarchy, going from CENTCOM commander, where Petraeus oversaw American forces throughout much of the broader Middle East region,  to Afghan Theater commander was technically a demotion.  But the war in Afghanistan is the major military issue at this time.  And Petraeus’ heroic image makes him appear as far and away the best man for the job.  If he rejected such an offer, Petraeus would seem more interested in his own career than in the good of his country. Such a refusal would undermine  his image as a self-sacrificing patriot, and his presidential chances would be severely harmed, if not ruined.

Now, if everything goes according to form,  Petraeus is going to be too occupied in Afghanistan  to be able to engage in the public self-promotion that would be necessary to facilitate his run for the presidency.  And if the situation in Afghanistan fails to improve dramatically, which is most likely, Petraeus will lose the aura of a military genius, and his political appeal will evaporate.  Moreover, the military’s current counterinsurgency doctrine,  of which Petraeus is the author, would be shown to be ultimately ineffective.

As the perceptive war commentators Robert Dreyfuss and Tom Engelhardt observe: “Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN [counterinsurgency] theory isn’t dead yet, it’s utterly failed so far to prove itself. The vaunted February offensive into the dusty hamlet of Marjah in Helmand province has unravelled. The offensive into Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and a seething tangle of tribal and religious factions, once touted as the potential turning point of the entire war, has been postponed indefinitely. After nine years, the Pentagon has little to show for its efforts, except ever rising casualties and money spent.”

Obama, on the other hand, would come out of the Afghan misadventure in the best political shape possible, since it could be said that he did all that was possible to snatch victory out of the jaws of defeat.

See Ditz, “Awash With Fictional ‘Success,’ Deployment Sets Petraeus Up for a
Big Fall”

In short, Obama has sent Petraeus out to fail, thus tarnishing the general’s image of invincibility and also discrediting  the war in Afghanistan. For having provided the proponents of military victory in Afghanistan with additional troops, resources, and now the Napoleon of counterinsurgency, Obama has given them more than  enough rope to hang themselves.  At the point it became apparent to the great majority of the American people that the US could not achieve victory in Afghanistan, despite the most strenuous efforts, the ever-cautious Obama would see that it had become politically safe to declare the war militarily unwinnable and seek some type of diplomatic solution. That is probably something he has wanted to do all along but feared doing when it was still possible that a substantial proportion of the public would blame him for losing Afghanistan. At least, that is how everything would work out if things went according to form.

Unfortunately for Obama, in Petraeus  he is dealing with a very politically savvy individual, who knows above all else how to protect his own image. Petraeus is simply too crafty to fall into this  trap. Just as he was smart enough to make the surge in Iraq appear like a great success, he is showing himself to be making every effort to  avoid the possibility of  taking the blame for any failure in Afghanistan..  In his confirmation hearing, Petraeus told the Senate Armed Services Committee not to expect any  success soon in Afghanistan.  Commentator Jason Ditz writes  that “the general seems to be determined to downplay any hopes of a quick turnaround or even a long-term turnaround of the disastrous war.”

In his prepared remarks for the committee, Petraeus stated: “My sense is that the tough fighting will continue; indeed, it may get more intense in the next few months.”

Although Petraeus professed support for Obama’s policy in Afghanistan, which includes the July 2011 troop-withdrawal timeline, he essentially says that there is not going to be much, if any, progress by that date and if the United States wants to win it will have to maintain substantial forces there for the long term.  While  Petraeus is too careful to explicitly attack Obama’s July 2011 timeline, his view on the war is rendering it meaningless. He has stated that “It’s important to note that July 2011 will be the beginning of a process … not the date by which we head for the exits and turn off the lights.”

Petraeus did not specifically state when the United States should exit Afghanistan or even what progress would look like.  Consequently, there will be no way to blame Petraeus for failure in Afghanistan because he has not defined success.  In short, Petraeus provided a masterful demonstration of the bureaucratic art of  pre-emptive CYA.

Now Petraeus has certainly protected  himself from any possible blame but we can wonder why members of the Congress should ever support such an undefined mission, which would be somewhat like Congress providing billions of dollars to fund a NASA manned mission to Mars without the head of NASA specifically saying when and if the red planet would ever be reached.

In the U.S. Senate’s whirlwind confirmation of Petraeus as commander of US forces in Afghanistan, no member of the  self-styled  “World’s Greatest Deliberative Body”  was able to transition from Petraeus’ testimony to question the whole purpose of the  Afghan war.   If there are no concrete benchmarks or an exit date,  what is the purpose for the US being there? And how can it be determined whether the US effort is worth it?

Members of the US Senate Armed Services committee should have bombarded Petraeus with these questions at his confirmation hearing, and not allowed him to get away with his nebulous descriptions.  And there should have been discussion of  these broad issues on the floor of the US Senate before the final confirmation vote.  But none of this was done.  The members of the Senate were too much in awe of Petraeus’ great stature, and too fearful that anything they said might be interpreted as harsh questioning of the highly esteemed military leader, which could do them political harm.  As national security specialist Winslow T. Wheeler observes in his aptly titled article, “General Petraeus and His Senate Vassals”:  “Basically it was a hearing chaired by General Petraeus and attended by politicians supplicating him to offer any response he might care to, preferably blessing the ‘questioner’ with either praise or agreement. It wasn’t oversight; it was bad theater.”

So Obama is in no better position than he was before the McChrystal affair. As the war drags on interminably, it is Obama, not Petraeus, who will be held responsible. If he were a real leader, Obama would be willing to take the political risk for his decision on the matter of war, but he is unwilling to do this.  General Petraeus, on the other hand, remains in a position to grab the presidency in 2012, if Obama’s standing in the polls does not improve.

Stephen J. Sniegoski, Ph.D. earned his doctorate in American history,with a focus on American foreign policy, at the University of Maryland. His focus on the neoconservative involvement in American foreign policy antedates September 11,and his first major work on the subject, “The War on Iraq: Conceived in Israel” was published February 10, 2003, more than a month before the American attack. He is the author of “The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel”. More articles