What Petraeus Understands

Now that he has left Iraq in better shape than he found it, can Gen. David Petraeus save Afghanistan and the rest of the region? He'll need to apply some tough lessons from Baghdad to his new challenge- just not the ones you think.

General David Petraeus left Iraq last week with proper fanfare for his success in dramatically reducing the violence that had steadily engulfed the country until late last summer. At the end of October, he'll take the helm of the four-star Central Command that oversees US military affairs in all of the Middle East and South Asia. His new to-do list will be long and complex. The general will no doubt be applying a number of important lessons from Iraq in his new command. They aren't necessarily the lessons most people think, but they just might be the lessons that America - struggling to contain a growing two-country war in Pakistan and Afghanistan and locked in a tense regional showdown with Iran - urgently needs to learn...

When Petraeus takes the reins at CENTCOM, he'll need to take a similar long, hard look at Pakistan's border region and Afghanistan to arrive at the same fundamental diagnosis of the problem. As in Iraq, he is likely to conclude that the solution lays not in merely pumping more troops into the region but rather in how those troops are used. Nor, with apologies to Bob Woodward, will there be some silver-bullet technical solution to kill or capture the al Qaeda leadership. Troop numbers and technology were not the key factors that turned the tide in Iraq...

The lesson of Iraq is that there is no magic formula for any of the complex foreign policy challenges facing the United States. The right expertise must be brought to bear on all these problems - whether it's South Asia, finishing the job in Iraq, or containing Iran. A dangerous fantasy has taken hold in Washington that the Iraq war is "over" and that the United States can now turn its hammer on another problem. Yes, the remaining tasks in the Middle East are less combat than conflict termination - a primarily political and diplomatic job that requires military leverage to accomplish - but they are what the mission is all about. When will America learn that hasty exits do not make for stable endgames? The next president, whoever he is, would be wise to keep Petraeus at CENTCOM for long enough to bring some of these needed efforts to fruition.

Much more at Foreign Policy.

Tell Me How This Ends - Linda Robinson

After a series of disastrous missteps in its conduct of the war, the White House in 2006 appointed General David Petraeus as the Commanding General of the coalition forces. Tell Me How This Ends is an inside account of his attempt to turn around a failing war.