Terrible headline:

Among Top Officials, ‘Surge’ Has Sparked Dissent, Infighting

For two hours, President Bush listened to contrasting visions of the U.S. future in Iraq. Gen. David H. Petraeus dominated the conversation by video link from Baghdad, making the case to keep as many troops as long as possible to cement any security progress. Adm. William J. Fallon, his superior, argued instead for accepting more risks in Iraq, officials said, in order to have enough forces available to confront other potential threats in the region.

The polite discussion in the White House Situation Room a week ago masked a sharper clash over the U.S. venture in Iraq, one that has been building since Fallon, chief of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees Middle East operations, sent a rear admiral to Baghdad this summer to gather information. Soon afterward, officials said, Fallon began developing plans to redefine the U.S. mission and radically draw down troops.

Well, it’s good that we’re planning for withdrawal – we plan for everything else, and if Congress does adopt the Osama plan for Iraq we at least owe our troops an orderly defeat redeployment.

But when Don Rumsfeld was SECDEF, the thrust of Beltway criticism was that the administration was drinking its own bathwater on Iraq, refusing to listen to alternative points of view and insisting that there was light at the end of the tunnel. Now that the President has appointed a very different personality to serve as SECDEF in Robert Gates, a Navy four-star admiral to serve as CENTCOM commander for the first time in history and appointed as a war czar at home a retired 3-star army officer who had criticized the surge, the chattering class seem surprised to learn that there the president is hearing differing opinions.

This isn’t a bug – it’s a feature.

CENTCOM is rightly concerned about the larger picture that he’s responsible for – Iraq of course, but also Iran, and the Horn of Africa. The army Chief of Staff is concerned about the overall state of the army. General Petraeus is trying to win the war that he’s been handed, and appears to having some success – even SECDEF seems to be pleasantly surprised with the surge’s military success, and holds out hopes for political accomodation:

In Baghdad, (Ambassador Ryan) Crocker and (deputy national security adviser Meghan ) O’Sullivan pressed Maliki to reach consensus with four other Iraqi leaders representing Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds. In late August, the five announced agreement on a path forward on stalled legislation such as de-Baathification. A week later, Bush made a surprise visit to Anbar where he met with Maliki and the others to congratulate them, then met with the sheiks to highlight the success of the U.S.-tribal coalition.

The trip energized Bush and his team. Even Gates said he was more optimistic than he has been since taking office. While the secretary had been “cagey” in the past, a senior defense official said, “he’s come to the conclusion that what Petraeus is doing is actually more effective than what he thought.”

Three things are not in question:

1) There is no strategically sensible, morally acceptable way to quickly withdraw American forces from Iraq.

2) The surge cannot last forever in any case. Units that had been extended are already beginning to rotate home. Most estimates state that, without further extensions, the force will settle back to the previous level of around 140,000 personnel next spring.

3) The surge is enjoying uneven success. That’s better than slow failure, and a reason for hope.

Time is not on our side, but when the alternative is failure we should not be in a hurry to seize that alternative. Nor should we be so concerned about our ability to fight future, theoretical wars that we damage our chances to carve a victory out in the fight we’re actually in.

General Petraeus should be given his time.