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Haass: Petraeus, Crocker Blunt Congressional Criticism on Iraq

Council on Foreign Relations

Interviewee: Richard N. Haass, President, Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewer: Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor

September 11, 2007

Richard N. Haass, president of CFR and a longtime expert on the Middle East, says the congressional testimony by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker has to a large extent “regained control of the Iraq debate” for the Bush administration. He says that by proposing withdrawals of U.S. troops in Iraq to the pre-“surge” levels by next spring/summer, Petraeus has “co-opted the reductions argument” of the Democrats and others. Haass also believes Iraq may not remain the chief foreign policy issue in the 2008 presidential campaign. “My growing sense is that while Iraq will be part of the backdrop to the campaign, it will not have the salience as an issue that it has had for the last six months,” says Haass. “It’s not clear to me that Iraq will necessarily be the dominant issue. It’s not even clear to me that Iraq will necessarily be the dominant foreign policy issue.”

What was your impression of the dual presentations of General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to the House Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees yesterday?

My overriding impression is that the administration has, to some extent—maybe a large extent—regained control of the Iraq debate and that two arguments seem to be gaining traction. One is that anything that smacked of what the Iraq Study Group termed a “precipitous withdrawal” would be a strategic error. Secondly, there has been sufficient progress, at least on the military side in certain areas, to justify some continuation of the policy. On top of that, Petraeus added the dimension of some withdrawals and as I understand it we are essentially looking at a return to pre-surge levels by next spring/ summer.

Read the rest of this article on the cfr.org website.

Copyright 2007 by the Council on Foreign Relations. This material is republished on GlobalSecurity.org with specific permission from the cfr.org. Reprint and republication queries for this article should be directed to cfr.org.