Obama vs. the Generals? Or Obama AND the Generals?

Obama once told Bill O'Reilly the "surge" in Iraq had "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." McGovern breaks down this myth below, but my question is: Once you have surrendered this terrain, what's left to fight for? Moreover, what (real) evidence is there of Obama resisting the Pentagon? Obama's political style is one of not offending any "stakeholders," he does what the Pentagon tells him without question or hesitation. It's why he was selected for the job. 


Petraeus Cons Obama on Afghan War
by Ray McGovern
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/25-2

"Though the death toll for both Americans and Iraqis spiked in 2007, with about one thousand U.S. soldiers dying along with tens of thousands of Iraqis, eventually the violence abated, at least somewhat.

Well-informed military analysts credited a number of factors for bringing down the violence, including many that predated the surge. For instance, the Sunni disenchantment with al-Qaeda extremists - and the U.S. military's decision to put many Sunni insurgents on the payroll - occurred earlier in 2006.

So did the killing of al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and much of the de facto ethnic cleansing of the country as many Sunnis fled their former neighborhoods, turning Baghdad from a predominantly Sunni into a mostly Shia city. Despite the personal tragedies for individual Iraqis, the forced separation did cause the Sunni-vs.-Shiite violence to decline.

Also, as the U.S. occupation came under greater military pressure, American troops were given permissive "rules of engagement" that led to a number of atrocities, including the killing of civilians over the slightest suspicion that they might represent a threat.

The slaughter escalated during the "surge" with Apache helicopters unleashing 50-caliber cannon fire on "military-age males," as happened in the incident on July 12, 2007, that was captured on gun-barrel video and posted on WikiLeaks on April 5, 2010.

Grabbing Credit
Despite the variety of factors that contributed to a drop-off of violence by 2008, Washington's influential neoconservatives insisted on an explanation that credited solely the "surge" of over 20,000 U.S. troops sent to Iraq in 2007. And the FCM readily went along with the neocon spin, judging Republican John McCain as "right" on the surge and Obama as "wrong" to oppose it.

So effective was the media panegyric to the surge that Obama decided to get in step by reversing himself and offering his own gratuitous praise just two months before the election in 2008. Providing a hint of his later willingness to show "flexibility" on such issues, candidate Obama reversed himself and told Bill O'Reilly the surge had "succeeded beyond our wildest dreams." "