"Tell me how this ends"--Petraeus 2003

Rick Atkinson:

Lt. Gen. David H. Petraeus, who is President Bush's choice to become the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, posed a riddle during the initial march to Baghdad four years ago that now becomes his own conundrum to solve: "Tell me how this ends."

That query, uttered repeatedly to a reporter then embedded in Petraeus's 101st Airborne Division, revealed a flinty skepticism about prospects in Iraq -- and the man now asked to forestall a military debacle.

Long recognized as one of the Army's premier intellectuals, with a PhD from Princeton to complement his West Point education, Petraeus, 54, will inherit one of the toughest assignments handed any senior officer since the Vietnam War. He takes command of 132,000 U.S. troops in a country shattered by insurgency and sectarian bloodletting, with a home front that is divided and disheartened after 3,000 American combat deaths. If his riddle of 2003 remains apt, so does the headline on a Newsweek cover story about Petraeus in July 2004: "Can This Man Save Iraq?"

Skepticism is rife, inside and outside the Army. "Petraeus is being given a losing hand. I say that reluctantly. The war is unmistakably going in the wrong direction," retired Army Gen. Barry R. McCaffrey said in an interview yesterday. "The only good news in all this is that Petraeus is so incredibly intelligent and creative. . . . I'm sure he'll say to himself, 'I'm not going to be the last soldier off the roof of the embassy in the Green Zone.' "

Petraeus, if controversial among some peers who deem him arrogant or excessively ambitious, is seen by many others as perhaps the last, best hope for success in Iraq. "If anyone can pick up the baton and run with it, it is David Petraeus," said retired Gen. Gordon R. Sullivan, a former Army chief of staff.

After spending 2 1/2 of the past four years in Iraq, as a division commander and then as the officer overseeing the initial reconstruction of Iraqi security forces, Petraeus is known to believe that a stable, pacified Iraq is still possible -- if not probable -- but not without dramatically improved security. Having also served in Bosnia after the catastrophic civil war there, he has told friends that he sees troubling parallels between that country and Iraq. Two months ago, he said, "I actually stay awake occasionally at night trying to figure out the path ahead."

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It is amusing to see Atkinson speaking in the third person about his own time as an embed with Petraeus's unit. He wrote a book, In the Company of Soldiers: A Chronicle of Combat, about the experience that, while critical of others, generally had high praise for Gen. Petraeus. The book is not as good as his history of the North African campaign in World War II, An Army at Dawn.

Gen. Petraeus's toughest job will probably be in Washington, where he will have to persuade Congress to give his strategy a chance. He will not have any trouble with the President or the Pentagon. Ultimately he faces the same problem that General Abizaid faced in Washington, the crumbling political support for defeating the enemy in Iraq. One advantage that he has always had to date is a good relationship with the media. Much of that is due to the Atkinson embed as well as the NY Times Michael Gordon. With those two giving him good reviews for his part of the liberation of Iraq, he has gone own to praise for his work in training the Iraqi army and his latest effort in revising the counter insurgency doctrine for the US military.

This new job may be a turning point for his media fan club, but so far it looks like Atkinson and Gordon are going to give him a chance. The big question is whether the Congress will. There are just too many Democrats who are desperate to lose in Iraq for their own political purposes. The challenge of overcoming them is the real next battle.