Don’t tell Bill Kristol, but it seems David Petraeus wanted to go to Syria to try some of the old appeasement diplomatic engagement and Bush told him “no.”
It’s a reminder that, ultimately, Petraeus’ tactics in Iraq have had a very hefty dose of “seeking pragmatic compromises with oft-unsavory adversaries” about them. In the particular context of Iraq, at the particular time he was put in charge, that was a tactical approach in service of a strategic concept that most liberals had lost faith in some time ago (I certainly had). But in Iraqi terms, it was roughly the strategy that liberals were urging us to adopt back in 2004 and more to the point, the general blueprint has a lot in common with the way liberals see the world and relatively little connection to the manichaeanism of the contemporary right.
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