General David Petraeus should be regarded as a credible voice on progress in Iraq, not a political and journalistic snake charmer.

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It’s still impossible to tell whether any of the metrics of success in the Iraq war presented in the report accompanying General Petraeus’s testimony will be convincing to Congress or the public at large that the troop surge is working. Still there’s no denying that General Petraeus has already achieved the seemingly impossible and made real progress where previous Iraq-war commanders had failed on an issue vital to achieving victory: He’s been generating positive press coverage for the war effort.

That’s a low bar, and it’s hard to quantify the effect of positive press coverage as it relates to military success. But in 2005, one media study found that there were four times as many stories focusing on the costs and problems of the war as there are accounts military successes  — so it’s hard to imagine the media isn’t undermining the war effort, intentionally or not. Especially in an era where congressional politics is as likely to determine troop levels as the counterinsurgency plans of the military leadership, a general who wants to win has to make his case in the court of public opinion.

DRUM’S BEAT
And that’s exactly what Petraeus has been doing, much to the irritation of the antiwar crowd. Representative is The Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum: “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,” Drum observes. “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.”

The funny thing about this observation is that Petraeus is essentially being called out here for trying to do his job, a task one might more succinctly define as “winning.” Certainly, a general tasked with achieving a military objective is within his rights to campaign for more political support for that objective, even going directly to the public. There’s no guarantee he will be granted further political support — be it more resources, extended deadlines for showing progress, etc. — but it’s hard to blame him for trying.

And Petraeus has tried very hard, observes Drum. “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,” Drum writes.

Of course, Drum doesn’t substantiate his claim about any of this misleading classified information beyond a comment from a Rep. John Porter (R., Nev.) that he was told by Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker that there could be genocide, exorbitantly high gas prices, and the possibility of Iran taking over Iraq if the U.S. pulls out. But none of these are ridiculously overstated consequences of what might happen if the U.S. pulls out — in fact, in citing the article about Porter, Drum didn’t mention that the congressman’s own spokesman noted that the scenario “makes sense if Iran moves into Iraq.” Porter, who has made three trips to Baghdad in the last 18 months, also said of his trip “I saw a lot of successes, and I noticed substantial improvement in Baghdad.” Porter is in a fine position to judge whether there has been progress in Iraq on his most recent trip — and a Drum seems to be in an unlikely position to suggest to the Congressman Porter that he was subject to some dog-and-pony show.

Drum nonetheless feels that Petraeus has somehow been dishonorable: “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,” Drum said. Drum also suggests that Petraeus is not “an honest broker.”

To address Drum’s points in order, first, it hardly seems that Petraeus has been deceptive to anybody about the woeful state of political progress in Iraq. Here’s the beginning of a recent Reuters story: “The top U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, said on Friday the Iraqi government’s progress toward national reconciliation, a key justification for increased troops levels, was disappointing” — sounds pretty straightforward there. Second, there’s no compelling case to be made that Petraeus has made any undue claims about the reconstruction effort, beyond being justifiably proud of a few notable successes with regard to reconstruction such as city of Baqubah. And in any event, Petraeus undoubtedly knows that trying to convince anybody that Iraqi reconstruction is a runaway success ahead of his congressional testimony is a fool’s errand.