That’s it. That’s what Andrew Sullivan has to say about his attacks last year against General David Petraeus:
At one point last year, I was worried that Petraeus was being used politically. I was wrong. He’s been a magnificent general, in a near-impossible situation. Ditto Crocker. Along with Patrick Fitzgerald, they strike me as among the most impressive public servants of our time.
What Andrew was actually bleating about was Petraeus being an overtly partisan officer. Here he is in July:
He has, alas, played the partisan role before – writing an op-ed in 2004 that had the effect of supporting the Bush administration’s re-election effort.
…
If Petraeus wants to appear as an objective, military professional in September, he is not going about it the right way.
And again in July:
For Petraeus to allow himself to be used in this way is a serious failure of judgment. And used he was. Just look how Hewitt coopted the military leadership for the Bush-Cheney narrative. This is pure Weimar: stab-in-the-back reactionaries trying to coopt the military for an agenda of one-party rule in defense of the homeland. Petraeus will regret his misjudgment. For him to aid, abet and ally himself with such a vicious and extreme partisan can only serve to undermine his critical presentation in September.
Worried that his readers might not get the point, here’s Andrew in September:
If Drudge is right and the general and the ambassador are going to give Fox News’ Brit Hume an exclusive hour-long sit-down, then it seems to me they forfeit any pretense of neutrality. They really need either to stick to the Congressional testimony, or appear on more outlets than a purely Republican network. It’s extremely important for the integrity of the US military – and the credibility of Petraeus – that it remain above partisanship and even the appearance of partisanship. Here’s hoping Drudge is wrong. They couldn’t be that stupid, could they?
I wrote about that September post here. Andrew joined noted moderate Glenn Greenwald in this campaign, of course.
Given the number of words Andrew has written defending Jeremiah Wright, I’d have expected he’d write a bit more about his misguided assault on Petraeus — perhaps even including one of those apologies he’s keen on demanding from others.
I won’t hold my breath, though.
Update: Welcome, Instapundit readers, and Thanks, Glenn, for linking.
Filed under: Andrew Sullivan, David Petraeus, Home Alone, Hysteria, Iraq, Joe's Blogroll, Military, Politics
Andrew Sullivan was wrong. Also, in other news, the sun is big and hot. ;)
For Andrew Sullivan to admit he was wrong about General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker is simply to admit that he has a firm grasp of the obvious….talk about being behind the curve
While I’ve often disagreed with Andy, in today’s hyper-partisan, never-concede, get-the-last-word, spin-obfuscate-and-dissemble-till-the-other-side-gets distracted atmosphere for political discourse, this sort of straightforward, unqualified, no-hedging, no-blaming-the-audience-for-being-offended admission is to be applauded.
Yes, there could have been more, per your closing comment, but credit where credit is due, etc., etc. We could use more of it — like, from me once in a while :-)
Something tells me General Petraeus–who, let’s face it, is a manly man– is now Andrew Sullivan’s “screensaver of the month.”
Andrew Sullivan?
I seem to recall the name. Can’t place it though. I guess I’ll have to click the link to jog my memory.
Only via Glenn via folks like you do I even find out stuff like this. I haven’t given Sullivan the time of day in since about 2004 when he went off his rocker. I used to read him daily. ‘Nuff said.
“this sort of straightforward, unqualified, no-hedging, no-blaming-the-audience-for-being-offended admission is to be applauded.”
Credit where credit is due? Definitely. Acknowledged? Definitely. Applauded? Only in the way one applauds a retarded child for not pooping in his pants for once.
Yes Andrew, you are wrong, in more ways than you’ll ever know.
Jim C.: Hillarious.
Hey, just tryin’ to be all magnanimous and ‘new tone’-ish and such. Or, to reference your allusion, taking baby steps, as it were.
Fixed that for ya, Joe.
Hmmmm.
You read Andrew Sullivan?
Well there’s some minutes of your life you’ll never get back.
Sullivan was parroting a line that Lawrence Korb was shopping around last April and May in various op-ed pages. He claimed that the op-ed Petraeus did for WaPo on the situation in Iraq (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A49283-2004Sep25.html) was a political move because it came near the November elections (Sept), and that his testimony before Congress could not be trusted because it would be likewise politically driven. Korb was so far off that you could only take his assertions as a deliberate insult.
Korb claimed the Petraeus piece was “misleading”, but Korb was throwing sand into the air, hoping no one could remember what the General said. Petraeus in fact repeatedly qualified his optimism, saying, in a typical example, “The future undoubtedly will be full of difficulties, especially in places such as Fallujah. We must expect setbacks and recognize that not every soldier or policeman we help train will be equal to the challenges ahead.”
Korb’s attack on the timing of the piece deliberately ignored the context, again assuming no one would be able to recall. But Petraeus explains the timing in the op-ed itself: “It is likely that insurgent attacks will escalate as Iraq’s [January] elections approach.”
The timing was driven by the upcoming *Iraqi* elections and the spurt of violence that began in August and September of 2006.
This was particularly topical. WaPo published an article titled “Congress Is Told That Road to Iraq Elections May Be Violent” on Sep. 23, and another titled “Iraqi Leader Vows Election Won’t Be Delayed” on Sep. 24. The Petraeus op-ed came out on Sept. 26.
Korb is a dishonest creep.
Whatever — I (and I’m pretty sure most of the people reading this on the right) have long since lost any interest in whether he’s on our side or not.
I give Sullivan a LOT of credit for stating “I was wrong.” When one who is wrong so often announces a realized error in such a fashion, I will sing praise to him. After all, it may be the only chance I get to do so.
I’m definitely with Steve-O on this. If Sullivan has seen the light, even if it is a very small light, then he should be given a chance to follow up on it. There are plenty of people who disagreed with his pre-anti-war views, and they should not take the occasion to slam him for those views. I also quit reading him a number of years ago, when he apparently saw a connection between Bush’s view on gay marriage and the war in Iraq. I have never thought that there was any such connection, and I thought that his writings on the subject of Iraq were well over the top, and non-helpful in general. But I am very patient, and if Sullivan wishes to rethink things, then I for my part am more than willing to let him.
I think everyone is missing something: the sentences following “I was wrong”:
I was wrong. He’s been a magnificent general, in a near-impossible situation. Ditto Crocker. Along with Patrick Fitzgerald, they strike me as among the most impressive public servants of our time.
One year Petraeus & Co. are partisan hacks. Now they are the most impressive public servants of our time. That’s some spinning.
Bad enough that Sullivan can’t pass a rabies test. Such gyrations show that he can’t pass an IQ test either. If you see Sullivan you should run for your life, no matter what mode he is in
Andrew is often wrong, only sometimes he realizes it.
I wouldn’t mind an honest change of opinion. After spending a few years being on the opposite end of Sullivan’s barbs and watching the amount of consistency/amount of intellectual honesty with which he deployed them – I am willing to give him no presumption of good faith.
He would have to say he’s wrong about a thousand other things, from unwarranted personal attacks on people on our side to defending people the old Andrew Sullivan wouldn’t have ever stooped to defending, before he would begin to come close the all the gripes the right has with him over the past few years. However, even if he did that, he’d still be a guy whose political opinions, at best, seemed to drift with the political winds and, at worst, seemed to be determined in cases like the current war based on whether he got along with the social policies of the people advocating it.
Was there really anything Petraeus said yesterday that people following this did not know about months beforehand? Was there anything ground-breaking? Any charts of the dip in violence that Petraeus showed have been published by the Brookings Institute (the Iraq Index) for months and I find it tough to believe he didn’t know about that (if he honestly didn’t, it says something about how perceptive his commentary is). Nothing substantially changed in the past two days – instead of apologizing now, how about he do his research and not spend a year attacking the guy.
The bellowing and character assassination done by Andrew before he knew anything at all about David Petraeus the man, David Petraeus the general, or Petraeus’ vision of how to fight the insurgency, says far more about Andrew than this one apology.
Okay, when does he revisit the loopy notions that Kerry & Obama are more conservative than Bush? I mean, Bush is certainly no conservative (especially when it comes to spending), but my goodness……
caveat: taking into account that the most conservative thing that a human being can possibly do while inhabiting this planet is agree with Sullivan’s stance on gay marriage as a given. Still, I’m just saying…..Andy, your stature drops with every overwrought instance of schoolgirl adoration that leads to such irrational declarations. See: dumb
I Like General Petraeus I can’t imagine the burden he must bear the awsome responsibily of that job.I thank God i don’t have to do it.i pray the angels keep him safe as he is doing his best to do that for us.
Thank You,
Patrice Manning
Sure, now they’re impressive public servants now, but just wait a week or two. Sooner or later one of them will say something that will set Sullivan off (maybe they’ll say Iraq is important and winnable or something), and he’ll turn on them.
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