General Betray-us’s PR Gambit
By NoQuarter on September 3, 2007 at 3:59 PM in Current Affairs, Iraq
From what I’ve been reading, I’m gathering the impression that Gen. Petraeus isn’t so much a “tool” of the Bush administration as he is a willing participant and, moreso, a master manipulator. Why, Petraeus even “cuddles abandoned Iraqi lambs!” Writes Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum (via Shirin):
GENERAL PETRAEUS’S PR BLITZKRIEG….I’ve been thinking about the whole David Petraeus issue for the past couple of days, and what I’ve been thinking about is how badly the liberal blogosphere and the liberal establishment have been outplayed here. While we’ve spent the last six months snarking about Friedman Units and complaining aimlessly about spineless Democrats, Petraeus has been slowly and methodically carrying out an extremely disciplined military campaign with a very precise goal: gaining support for David Petraeus and the surge.
In retrospect, this is hardly a surprise. Petraeus is a four-star general, by all accounts a brilliant man, and a professional student of counterinsurgency. He’s keenly aware of the value of both the media and public opinion, and he did what any counterinsurgency expert would have counseled in his circumstances: he unleashed a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at opinion makers and politicians. For months the military transports to Baghdad have been stuffed with analysts and congress members, and every one of them has gotten a full court press of carefully planned and scripted presentations, tightly controlled visits to favored units, and assorted dollops of “classified” information designed to flatter his guests and substantiate his rosy assessments without the inconvenience of having to defend them in public.
And it’s worked. Even though there’s been no discernable political progress, minimal reconstruction progress, and apparently no genuine decrease in violence, he’s managed to convince an awful lot of people that the first doesn’t matter, the second is far more widespread than it really is, and the third is the opposite of reality.
First, a side note, lest it get ignored: Kevin Drum is spot on in his criticism of the blogosphere and liberal establishment for “snarking about Friedman Units and complaining aimlessly about spineless Democrats” while Petraeus has masterfully gained supporters and controlled the message.
So, every time we rant about the spineless Congress, we’re in reality abetting Bush’s and Petraeus’s game plan. We need to keep our eyes on the ball. And we need to empower, not denigrate, Congress, by encouraging them to step up the pressure to end the war, and also by praising them for what they are doing, including their significant passage of bills aimed at helping veterans.
Back to Drum’s analysis of Gen. Patreaus’s PR blitzkreig:
Next is a Washington Post article providing a glimpse of Petraeus’s meticulous and politically savvy planning:
The sheets of paper seemed to be everywhere the lawmakers went in the Green Zone, distributed to Iraqi officials, U.S. officials and uniformed military of no particular rank. So when Rep. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) asked a soldier last weekend just what he was holding, the congressman was taken aback to find out.
In the soldier’s hand was a thumbnail biography, distributed before each of the congressmen’s meetings in Baghdad, which let meeting participants such as that soldier know where each of the lawmakers stands on the war. [See examples here.]
….Just who assembled them is not clear. E-mails to U.S. Central Command’s public affairs office in Baghdad this week went unanswered.
“I had never seen that in the past. That’s new,” said Porter, who was on his fourth trip to Iraq. “Now I want to see what they’re saying about me,” he added, when he learned of the contents of his travel companions’ rap sheets.
For one, the quotations appeared to be selected to divide the visitors into those who are with the war effort and those who are against.
Finally there was this tidbit offered up by Andrea Mitchell five months ago when the surge was just getting started:
MITCHELL: Petraeus went to the Republican caucus and told them, I will have real progress to you by August….The Republicans were against the surge but they felt it was fait accompli, and that they were willing to give Petraeus until August. He told them there will be real progress by August.Five months ago Petraeus was guaranteeing to wavering Republicans that they’d see progress in August, precisely the month when the PR campaign was scheduled to go into high gear. Today he’s issuing dire warnings about al-Qaeda hegemony and nine-dollar gas if we leave, circulating bio pages that let his staff know whether they’re dealing with friend or foe among visiting congress members, and insisting repeatedly that violence is down in classified briefings where he doesn’t have to publicly defend his figures.
If these don’t sound like the actions of an honest broker to you, they don’t to me either. They sound like elements of a campaign with one overriding purpose: to convince politicians and opinion makers that we’re making progress in Iraq regardless of whether we are or not. We’re only seeing the results of Petraeus’s PR blitzkrieg now, but it’s obviously been in the works for months and it’s been a smashing success. The general has profoundly outplayed the amateurs on their home turf.
Bravo, general. Well played.
And those lambs? Laura Rozen featured a guest post at her blog, War & Piece:
I’m sorry, but Operation Petraeus Propaganda - reaches unexcelled heights with this article. It’s like a press release.
Coming tomorrow in the hard-hitting WaPo series leading up to the Petraeus briefing: “Petraeus cuddles abandoned Iraqi lambs!” The lede: “General David Petraeus, the man single-handedly responsible for turning the Iraq War around, likes to tell his troops about the importance of the “propaganda of the deed” in counterinsurgency operations. Always practicing what he preaches, over the last eight months, Petraeus has repeatedly put himself in mortal danger by descending on a town recently cleared and meeting locals without body armor or the other trappings of the elite commander. But Petraeus astonished even his own brain trust - composed of Rhodes scholar-warriors to a person - on Sunday when he publicly cuddled and fed a pair of baby lambs whose mother had been slaughtered in front of their eyes by al Qaeda only hours before. [New paragraph] Local residents were taken aback and immediately declared their devotion to the cause of bottom-up national reconciliation. “Before I thought of the Americans as my enemy,” said Ralph al-Peters, a resident of X, the town where the Petraeus cuddled the cuties. “But now I realize that the American Congress must not abandon us to the lamb-slaughterers. I hope they see that the enemy of our lambs is our enemy and that al Qaeda must be defeated so there is not another 9-11 nuclear holocaust made by the Iranians.”
It all reminds me of the film The Illusionist, not just the trickery, but the trickster’s ability to play on people’s need to believe:
Crown Prince Leopold: He has tricked you, it is all an illusion!
Chief Inspector Uhl: Perhaps there is truth in this illusion.
Chief Inspector Uhl wants to believe it is real. And that’s the trickster’s gift. Not just to trick people, but to create a yearning within people to believe. When I saw David Copperfield create falling snow on a Las Vegas stage, I wanted to believe it was real.
The professional trickster’s pride rests in his ability to fool people. As Shirin noted in her e-mail, “As a counterinsurgency expert, Petraeus is just great at self promotion. In fact, it is generally acknowledged among those who know him that his central focus is advancing his image and his career. He was described by one of his West Point colleagues as the kind of guy who would marry the commandant’s daughter in order to get ahead.”
How can we possibly counter such a powerful PR machine with such a clever fellow at its helm? We’ve been discussing how to get our message out in the threads immediately below, and it’s obvious we’re all frustrated as to how we can accomplish it.
One way we can counter this formidable PR onslaught is to STAY ON MESSAGE. We could adopt that “message discipline” for which Karl Rove is famous.
Yesterday, I caught part of a fascinating exchange on BookTV between Scott Ritter and Mark Crispin Miller. Miller was all about blaming the media and the media conglomerates for our inability to get our message out. Ritter was more about taking the American people to task for not paying attention, not speaking up, and not staying on message. Ritter used the example of Cindy Sheehan who, naturally, has a powerful message as the mother of a fallen soldier. Ritter noted that that powerful message broke through media barriers when she “sat in” near Bush’s Crawford, Texas ranch. She had, said Ritter, a great opportunity to keep her message alive. Instead, Ritter contends, she didn’t seize the moment and then in a short while, there she popped up in Venezuela with Hugo Chavez by her side, and then she and her pals occupied the office of Rep. John Conyers, alienating a man who is highly sympathetic to her original message.
Ritter says we need to be smart and savvy with how we use and state our message. If Cindy Sheehan had remained the mourning mother of a slain soldier, she’d have stayed far more effective. But by aligning herself with controversial side issues and by attacking those inclined to support her, she lost the frame and the media spotlight that had come so naturally to her.
We need FOCUS.
We need to not alienate those inclined to support us. We need to empower them through support. We must let them know we have their backs.
We need to not make the American public wary, or confused, by dragging every pet far-left cause into the Iraq war story. No more “Free Mumia.” No more Sean Penn types cozying up to Hugo Chavez. If those issues are important to you, great. But let’s not mix them in with the Iraq war message we want to get out.
The sole focus, I suggest, is on ending the war and bringing our trooops home (albeit responsibly and carefully).
I also caught Ritter and Miller on Book TV. For me the most profound thing I came away with was the obvious frustration and feeling of desperation on Ritter’s part. He mans the watch tower, lights the warning fire and no one responds. I found it painful to watch. If you haven’t read Waging Peace, do it soon. Scott has much to offer the peace movement, I hope it’s not too late.
He’s super, and he makes such good sense when I hear him speak. He’s not “out there,” although he is typically ahead of the pack in his analyses and foresight.
I’ve not read his books. Are they well-written? Like he speaks?
Great post, Susan. I agree completely. It’s sort of the “Mumia” principle at times…
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I just do not get it anymore….
It’s easier to marginalize the war protesters when they don’t unite behind a simple message. That’s one of the reasons I avoid A.N.S.W.E.R. protests. They always throw everything and the kitchen sink into their protests. Plus, I can’t get behind their purpose at all!
Cindy Sheehan has really become a sad case, and it’s painful to watch her now.
Glad you mentioned those A.N.S.W.E.R. protests, Leslie. I’ve cringed when C-Span has aired the live demonstration speeches, which wouldn’t attract any on-the-fence or mainstream-type person to join them.
Is Bush in Anbar Province right now meeting with the people who’ve been killing our troops?
Plus, if Bush is in Anbar, it would be a top secret visit in the dead of night because it’s too frigging dangerous to visit openly. That’s progress!
SusanUnPC
Mostly yes, but his references to “The Art of War” and “On War” will lose a lot of folks. You can sense his passion and desperation. The analogies he makes with the military and fireman, war and fire, in my opinion are brilliant. But his “In your face” style will piss off a lot of the incense burning crowd. My message to them is to get the fuck over their petty “My pet peeve first” bullshit. The Hun is at the gate! Scott’s message is simple. If we don’t all pull together to take back this country, enforce the rule of law, and defend the Constitution we are doomed.
The sole focus, I suggest, is on ending the war and bringing our trooops home (albeit responsibly and carefully).
I couldn’t agree more…We need our troops home without destroying the middle east in the process.
It should be the highest priority of our new president.
“It should be the highest priority of our new president.”
1. Clearly it won’t be, regardless of who the “new president” ends up to be. All you have to do is listen to them to see that.
2. By the time there is a new president - IF there is one - it will be too late.
The bottom line: If we leave it up to the new president, we are screwed, and so is the rest of the world most likely.
Shirin, while I empathize with your feelings, we can’t afford to throw the baby president out with the bathwater. Even if it’s not the cutest, best behaved baby, we gotta hang with it and positively encourage it to do the right thing.
If people get hung up on every single detail — or if the withdrawal plan doesn’t suit us to a “t” — no new president, even the best and brightest imaginable, will not be able to accomplish anything.
Let’s save our cynicism and disgust for the current bunch in the White House, but invest our heart and soul in the next president. It’ll seem superficially naive to do so, but it’ll give the new president a solid backing with which to work. It might feel righteous to pick way at the candidates, but it’ll doom us, this country, Iraq, and the rest of the world.
They’ll need some latitude. For one thing, because it’s going to be massively complicated to withdraw the troops.
Then there’s the sure-fire expectation that any bloodbath or ethnic cleansing that ensues when the troops pull out will be blamed on the new president by the Republicans. That president will need us at his/her back. The last thing the new administration needs is us joining the ‘wingers in belittling or attacking.
hoosierhoops
Your assuming that We the People will get another chance to go to the polls. I’m not at all sure that W and his minions will allow that to take place. If you listen to what Ritter had to say on Book TV, he urges people and begs them to stand up. Not later but now! It may just be my interpretation but I really feel he was trying to rally people to the streets without being visited today by DHS. It is my opinion that the current Administration will not allow the transfer of power through elections. Hope I’m wrong but that is my take.
We need to stand up now and demand troop withdrawal because the war is costing us and Iraq too much in lives and treasure. How many more people need to die in this war?
Leslie, I agree completely, but how? When? Where? What, specifically can we do that we have not been doing since before this disaster even began?
I am at a loss.
I dunno Shirin. We have to keep doing what we’ve been doing: protest, organize, write, sign petitions, make phone calls, vote, maybe run for office. Then hope for the best. That’s all we can do!
The funny part is anyone that thinks the Democraps are going to save us. Y’all want Hillary and She says we need to stay… a while. But it doesn’t make any difference even if Obama was “the man”. We are going to be in Iraq for years and I’m talking years. We are in a hole we can not get out of and if BushCo decides to attack Iran it is all over anyway. The military will down size in Iraq itself. It has no choice, there are not enough bodies to keep a surge going.
Bush broke the cardinal rule, ‘never shit where you eat’. The best that can be done now is squeezing off the money drain on the Treasury by the HAWKS and contractors and hoping like hell it’ doesn’t get worse over there.
I keep writing my Congressmen and telling them I think it’s all BS but that is all I can do. I feel like I did during the Cuban missile crisis as a kid. I stood by the FEC tracks watching a mile of flatbed train cars carrying Nike missile batteries to Miami beach.
Correction: Hillary Clinton does want withdrawal. And it was John Edwards in a recent debate who talked at length about how carefully it will have to be done and that it will take time. From the standpoint of logistics alone, it will take 10 months to a year.
“We are in a hole we can not get out of and if BushCo decides to attack Iran it is all over anyway.”
How true. Attacking Iran is so insane, I can’t wrap my brain around the knowledge that so many in the WH want it to happen.
::::
MEP, I missed a good part of Ritter on BookTV. Hope it’s replayed. Here’s the link to the BookTV page but I don’t see an audio/video link yet:
http://www.booktv.org/program.aspx?ProgramId=8572&SectionName=&PlayMedia=No
“Hillary Clinton does want withdrawal.”
What Hillary wants is the kind of non-withdrawal “withdrawal” that will leave those nice, bright, shiny new permanent - excuse me, “enduring” - bases well populated for the foreseeable future, the Regional Imperial Command and Control Center fully staffed and operational, Iraqi oil and its profits well under the control of American Big Oil, Hillary Clinton as Empress of Iraq and Bill Clinton her Imperial Consort.
Both she and Obama have made it very clear that they will maintain U.S. presence in Iraq for many years to come, thus fulfilling the neocon dream of Iraq as a base of U.S. operations.
They have both declared that they will bomb whomever they decide needs bombing, including allies, and including the possible use of nuclear weapons. The have both declared their intention to significantly increase the size of the U.S. military. There is only one purpose for which the U.S. needs a larger military, and that is to invade and occupy more countries.
That is why there is no way in hell either Hillary or Obama will get any support whatsoever from me, and they sure as hell will not get my vote.
That’s really short-sighted Shirin. The Dems may be bad, but they’re still better than any of the Republican candidates. You don’t think all of the GOP candidates won’t do exactly what the Bushies/neocons want and more?
Who are you going to vote for then Kucinich or Gravel? If it’s a tight race, you may be throwing your vote away and making it more likely that a Bushie will win.
Lesli, I understand your point, and it has validity, but I would rather not vote at all than vote for someone who intends to stay in Iraq, and who clearly plans to keep on bombing, invading, and occupying. And anyone who can even THINK about using nuclear weapons, let alone say it in a campaign speech - well, I don’t see that as being better than Bush.
I have voted Libertarian or third party since Nixon. I want my vote recorded in a column that say I dislike both the Dems and Pubs. Until Pubs and Dems stop voting for the lesser of two evils (evil is Still evil)and saying that voting third party is throwing your vote away we will always have a one party system with two mascots.
My beef with the Libertarians and third party people is that they wait until the big dogs start to campaign when they should be knocking on doors the day after an election preparing for the next one.
The Libertarians main problem is they spread their money too thin trying to be in every race in every State. I subscribe to the field of dreams theory. Get a President and they will come.
I will be voting for whoever is not running as a Dem. or Pub.
“From the standpoint of logistics alone, it will take 10 months to a year.”
According to some analysts it could be done in 3-6 months.
It will happen if and only if enough Iraqis decide to force the U.S. out, and when that finally happens we will see just how fast it can be done. My guess is it will take a hell of a lot less than 10-12 months when the time comes.
First, a side note, lest it get ignored: Kevin Drum is spot on in his criticism of the blogosphere and liberal establishment for “snarking about Friedman Units and complaining aimlessly about spineless Democrats” while Petraeus has masterfully gained supporters and controlled the message.
So, every time we rant about the spineless Congress, we’re in reality abetting Bush’s and Petraeus’s game plan. We need to keep our eyes on the ball. And we need to empower, not denigrate, Congress, by encouraging them to step up the pressure to end the war, and also by praising them for what they are doing, including their significant passage of bills aimed at helping veterans.
I would submit that it is the very spinelessness of Congressional Democrats that gives General Petraeus the scope with which to work his much vaunted trickery - not criticism from the Lefty Blogosphere - who nobody reads except the Choir. So…does Drum mean to maintain that our leaders in Congress are giving Petreaus the time of day because Lefty bloggers say nasty things about them and Petreaus is more cordial? Well, that’s pathetic - and it doesn’t exactly cover them in glory, nor does it give me any confidence in their abilities to discern shit from shinola. Luckily, I don’t buy it.
Further, if Congressional Democrats don’t feel sufficiently “empowered” by virtue of the fact that we elected them to be our leaders, I really don’t know what will do the trick. Maybe a support group?
Passing bits of legislation here, and having another investigation there are all good, worthwhile things - but it isn’t enough when you, at the same time, extend by six months the dictatorial powers Bush assumed for himself. The signals we get from Congressional Dems are awfully mixed, and often dissonant.
The problem as I see it is the Democrats have lost their compass. They make idle threats that they back away from as soon as any Republican says “BOO” too loudly and uses the “f” word (”fillibuster”).
It’s really very simple. If Congressional Democrats want to be respected by the rank and file, they need to start throwing sand in the war machinery. Right Wing crazies will call them all sorts of names, and blather on about how they don’t support the troops and all that BS - but the people who elected them, will be mollified. So will those Lefty Bloggers who apparently have so much clout they can send all the pols running for the smelling salts. Americans understand a whole lot more than they are ever given credit for. They should stop needing reassurance and start being leaders.
And I’ll just betcha that if they were to be more agressive, support for Congress would go up in all the polls. And let’s face it, that’s all any of them give a damn about.
Susan
Book TV will reair Ritter/Miller on the 9th. Check your local listing. I would love to get your feed back on what you read between the lines with Ritter. I saw and heard a desperate man trying to rally his countrymen in the 11th hour. This guy has been and probably still is “in the know” much more than the average well informed citizen. How do he and Larry get on?
Thanks, MEP. I’ll Tivo it.
As for those who’d not vote if they don’t get their pet candidate: I guess it’s considered more righteous to be stubborn than to begin to get the troops out — which any of the Democratic candidates will begin to do once in office. Not voting is tantamount to voting for the Republican candidate who’ll perpetuate the war and, if Bush doesn’t hit Iran, the next Republican president surely will. Good god. What selfish thinking.
I thought the idea was that fewer and fewer U.S. troops = fewer Iraqi casualties. Therefore, an incremental withdrawal = fewer Iraqi casualties.
(’course, ethnic cleansing will surge with U.S. withdrawals. Maybe it’s just that no scenario will suffice. Maybe it’s more important to find any American plan inadequate than it is to turn Iraq over to the Iraqis.)
What if General Betrayus’s report to Bush and Congress said this:
Mr. President:
The United States Army and Marine Corps achieved their principal mission of overthrowing Saddam Hussein and his government. We did so with dispatch and minimum loss of life. We were then confronted with a massive insurgency which U.S. civilian officials, including yourself, did not anticipate and for which we have not been given adequate personnel and resources. There is little if any prospect of resolving this insurgency anytime in the next decade, if not longer. Further, continued engagement in Iraq’s civil war distracts us from our most urgent mission in Afghanistan and erodes our stature in the world. Therefore, it is my recommendation that all U.S. forces be withdrawn from Iraq in an orderly but expeditious manner. In the event that this recommendation is not accepted, I have attached my letter of resignation from the United States Army.
David Petraeus
General, United States Army
here’s the comment I sent to Megan Greenwell.
“could you just let Petraeus write your schmooze piece for you? You are acting as a tool in a PR campaign and while writing about a “journalism” student, you just seem to have become void of any sense of responsibility to the reader. I need not come to the conclusion that Petraeus is a failure or that he isn’t acting on the up and up to see many areas where he clearly is challenged and has made mistakes that are important to note.
This is a glosser piece and you shouldn’t write this sort of drivel for the masses. Your article doesn’t even approach the question of whether Wesley Morgan is being used to promote a “success”.
The numbers do not indicate success. Generals calling for disbanding the police isn’t a success. Iraqi casualties are on the rise for several months in a row. The towns that are experiencing decreases in violence…are abandoned. The amount of Iraqi refugees to the US is peaking, and to the neighbor countries is in the millions….
But you’re going to write a fluff piece..what a shame.”
susanuNPC:
Shirin, while I empathize with your feelings, we can’t afford to throw the baby president out with the bathwater. Even if it’s not the cutest, best behaved baby, we gotta hang with it and positively encourage it to do the right thing.
Exactly right Susan..
BTW.. I hope you are feeling better.. Good luck with everything..
We certainly don’t want to put you on the injured reserve list
I don’t snark about “spineless democrats” because I believe they are on the same page as the republicans. They approved the war, they have no intention of defunding the war and they have signed on for the next war with Iran. And, they are not spineless when it comes to attacking the left (just ask Nader and the Greens).
That Iraqi in the article who was fawning over betrayus and saying we must avoid another “911 by Iranians” sounds like a plant. I heard one on MPR saying how important it was for the Iraqi government to do what the Americans wanted particulary in regard to the oil law. No Iraqi would talk like this guy.
Yeah, I agree.
They all get their campaign money and such from the same sources.
Petraeus has played this “Stuff is getting better in Iraq” game before.
Six weeks before the 2004 election, Petraeus wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post in which he lied and said that there had been “tangible progress” in Iraq, and that “Momentum has gathered in recent months.”
We all know how that worked out.
And the DoJ’s site has many examples, starting as far back as 2003, of Petraeus misleading on how well it was going in Iraq at the time he made the comments.
Cool.