Petraeus is no foreigner to the issue, having played, eight years ago, an important role in facilitating the emergence of the Islamic State by his overly clever – actually naïve, or worse – policy of co-opting the Sunni with promises of shared power in Baghdad, and then simply looking away as the U.S.-installed Shia government in Baghdad ditched those promises.
The pervasive bedlam in Iraq shows, inter alia, that you can earn a Princeton PhD, writing erudite nonsense about
“counter-insurgency,” and still flunk war. To be fair, the continuing carnage Petraeus left in his wake was probably more a function of the myopia that attends overweening careerism and political ambition, rather than a deliberate attempt to enflame the area for continued, wider war. (He had already gotten his fourth star.)
Are there moderate terrorists in Syria? Ray says no – not the first time Ray disagreed with the be-medaled former general or, for that matter, with Obama and Kerry, who each make a cameo appearance trying their best to look like they know what they are talking about. Only 2 minutes long: