[NYTr] Petraeus: Echoes of Gen Westmoreland and Vietnam

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

Financial Times - Sep 9, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d7ea8394-5efc-11dc-837c-0000779fd2ac.html

Echoes of Gen Westmoreland and Vietnam

By Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington

There is a sense of déjà vu surrounding Monday’s Congressional
testimony by General David Petraeus. In 1967, President Lyndon B.
Johnson recalled his top general in Vietnam to defend the war against
criticism from Congress.

Back in Washington, General William Westmoreland said the military had
reached a point where “the end begins to come into view”. There would
be “light at the end of the tunnel”, but “mopping up the enemy” might
take two more years.

Forty years on, General Petraeus will deliver a similar message.
Writing to troops ahead of his testimony, Gen Petraeus said the
coalition had “achieved tactical momentum and wrested the initiative
from our enemies in a number of areas of Iraq”. But he concluded the US
was “a long way from the goal line, but we do have the ball and we are
driving down the field”. The general is expected to say the US should
not abandon the ball and walk off the pitch at this point.

Most experts agree that the surge has helped improve security in
Baghdad as US forces have spent more time integrated into
neighbourhoods instead of patrolling in armoured vehicles. Anbar
province has also seen less violence as tribal sheikhs switched from
fighting US forces to siding with the Americans against al-Qaeda in
Iraq. Some experts question, however, whether the improvement in Anbar
was due more to serendipity than the surge.

“The use of forward deployed US troops . . . has not stopped sectarian
cleansing in Baghdad or elsewhere, but it has reduced the more brutal
forms of violence,” Anthony Cordesman from the Centre for Strategic and
International Studies, said recently.

The war has already cost the lives of 3,760 US troops, and wounded
28,000 more. Iraq Body Count, a group that monitors Iraqi deaths,
estimates that 70,000 Iraqis have been killed. It says there has been a
“modest improvement” in security compared with the bloody second half
of 2006, but that the first half of 2007 was the “most deadly first six
months for civilians” of any year since the invasion.

According to data from the independent Iraq Coalition Casualty Count
there has been progress since the surge came into full effect in June
with average daily fatalities falling from 4.23 in May to 2.84 by July.

The same group calculated that 2,074 Iraqis were killed in August, down
from 2,966 a year before. So far in September, 174 Iraqis have died,
against 3,543 last September, the bloodiest month since the invasion.

Gen Petraeus concedes “tangible political progress” expected from the
surge has “not worked out as we had hoped”. But he is expected to argue
that Iraqi leaders should be given more time.

Unlike Gen Westmoreland, who was lambasted for calling Congressional
critics “unpatriotic”, Gen Petraeus is more attuned to the need to
appease Congress, if only to buy time. Media reports last week
suggested he told President George W. Bush he could make a token
withdrawal of one brigade – about 4,000 troops – to assuage concerns,
although one senior military officer cautioned that no such decisions
had been taken.

There are about 170,000 US troops in Iraq. Gen Petraeus last week
echoed the views of senior officers in Washington when he suggested the
surge would start winding down from April, when the 15-month tours of
the five “surge” brigades started to end.

As the surge ends, however, the focus will shift to whether Mr Bush
will keep forces at the pre-surge level of about 135,000, or whether he
will consider further reductions, accomplished by not replacing some of
the other 15 combat brigades.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007