Questions, Quandaries and Quagmires
General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker testified before the Senate yesterday. Today they’re going to the other side of Capitol Hill for a similarly pointless day of trying to say as little as possible. Petraeus and Crocker are up on the Hill as the Administration’s point men. Like any members of the Administration they are required to hew closely to the Administration’s official position and the only unknown is whether or not one of them will flub a line. Last September they were up there in the midst of a potentially serious budget debate. This time around the election is looming and the prospect of any serious conflict between Congress and the White House is close to nil.
The Administration is paralyzed in Iraq; all the brouhaha with Petraeus and Crocker in Congress is a red herring. If we could’ve brought about an end the violence in Iraq through the application of American military force it would’ve happened by now. Similarly, if the political opposition to the war had the power to force the President’s hand, they would’ve done so by now. Instead, both sides, while constantly professing the utmost care for the troops, have more or less agreed to run out the clock on the current president.
Bush the Younger has a little more than nine months of his presidency remaining and barring a truly spectacular disaster (think Green Zone overrun by militants) there will be little to no change in our Iraq policy between now and inauguration day. Maybe Congress could’ve pushed harder on Iraq last year and maybe they did all that was possible, at the moment it is irrelevant.
The current situation is a political stalemate and neither side will have the strength to change anything until after November. (No one in a position of authority cares in the least what the actual Iraqis think or want.) While there is at least a small chance that something newsworthy enough to affect the election will happen during the testimony of Crocker and Petraeus, it is very unlikely. Even if Petraeus declared all was lost in Iraq, tore the plastic thing from his chest and stormed from the room it wouldn’t make a lick of difference. The pro-war people would simply dismiss him and continue defending the progress that they keep insisting we’re making.
Even the question of whether or not significant troop withdrawals will be possible is utterly unimportant at the present time. If the orders to start drawing down were issued tomorrow there would still be a huge number of American troops in country on November 4th. Moreover, those troops are still going to be coming under attack and suffering casualties, no matter what is said in Washington D.C. or Baghdad.
Besides all that there is one other indisputable tip off that these hearings are pointless: they’re occurring during business hours. If they were really important they’d be on in primetime. The presidential debates this fall will be on in primetime though, and they will matter a hell of a lot more than any testimony given on the Hill in April.
