LONDON — The thing to remember about U.S. Gen. David Petraeus' report to Congress on the progress made by the American military "surge" in Iraq is that he is basically reporting on his own performance. Nothing in a review of his past career suggests that he is prone to downplay his own achievements, and since he took command of U.S. forces in Iraq in February, his briefings have invariably been upbeat. The likelihood that he was going to say that now is the time to give up and go home from Iraq was always zero.
At Petraeus' level of responsibility there is no such thing as a nonpolitical general. He was chosen by and reports to a White House whose occupant has vowed that there will be no withdrawal from Iraq while he is in office. The two American generals who shared the command responsibility in Iraq when President George W. Bush first proposed the "surge" strategy late last year were fired when they did not back it. Of course Petraeus supports it.
So why are his opinions being treated with such reverence in political Washington, as if he were an independent auditor called in to assess the situation? Because the deeper truth is that none of the major players is really willing to pull the plug on the Iraq fiasco until after next year's election. Meanwhile, everybody is just marking time and Petraeus is their excuse for continuing to do so.