EVERY FAILURE OF THE WAR IS DOWN TO W..:

It will take humanity as well as guns to beat the Taliban, says General David Petraeus: David Petraeus, the US general who transformed the campaign in Iraq, has been declared the leading public intellectual. The thinking man’s soldier explains the limitations of shooting and killing (Dominic Lawson, 1/04/09, Times of London)

Sometimes a man’s appearance can be misleading. This one is about 5ft 9in tall, not especially powerful in build; he has ears that stick out and teeth that seem too big for his mouth and he walks with a slightly asymmetric tilt. Yet this is General David Petraeus, the warrior whose “surge” saved America from a humiliating scuttle out of Iraq and who is now the head of United States Central Command (Centcom).

Only when Petraeus engages in conversation does everything snap into place. Each of his words is chosen with painstaking precision and the gaze is similarly well directed. Above all there is a sense of restless intelligence; so perhaps it is not so extraordinary that this 56-year-old soldier has been named the world’s leading public intellectual by a panel nominated by two prominent magazines of the thinking classes, Prospect and Foreign Policy.

The winner’s citation declared: “The so-called ‘Petraeus doctrine’ is the only written piece of intellectual output in the last two years that has made a direct difference to the lives of millions. It is the first actively humane warfighting doctrine to come out of the Pentagon, enshrining the idea that winning a modern war requires ensuring the security and wellbeing of the civilian population. Petraeus has also waged a war of ideas against many in Washington who argued that fewer constraints and more ruthless tactics were required in Iraq.” And, it points out, he won.

...every success to a subordinate.

Posted by Orrin Judd at January 6, 2009 10:07 AM