re: #135 freetoken

It’s become an international news item:

Double trouble: identical twin sisters courted generals, lived the high life and racked up millions in debt

Insane soap opera. I’m reading into the massive hero worship that goes along with these guys.

Andrew Sullivan today:

The second reason was that I got to see him up close at one of those super secret media elite dinners the Atlantic’s David Bradley would hold and foolishly invite me to. I was the usual turd in the punchbowl and kept grilling Petraeus on answers: when would we get out of Iraq? How? Doesn’t real counter-insurgency require decades, i.e. a version of long-term civilizing imperialism? And what about Afghanistan? How could it work there? Wouldn’t it take a century of neo-imperialism? It was clear to me that he wasn’t used to being asked such questions by journalists and the brutal truth was, I came away from the lunch thinking this dude is improvizing like hell and it seems to be working, when nothing did before. So give him his due, but spare me the hagiography.

But more than that, I got a good glimpse of what this man’s skill really was: watching the open jaws and worshipping eyes of the hacks around the table, I could see this man was a superb Washington operator - like Colin Powell without any military victories. To spin the rush to exits in Iraq as a masterful American-led strategy - rather than a mixture of luck, courage, sectarian exhaustion and the Anbar switcheroo - was his greatest achievement. That is not necessarily a criticism of course. Good generals need political support, and need to stroke the press and Congress. But there was something about the journalistic swoon that unnerved me. The acceptance of all his bullshit about the genius of the “surge” - when it quite clearly succeeded in getting us out of there but plainly failed to bring about the national reconciliation it promised - also got under my skin.