Yesterday ABC reported that the White House decided to nix David Petraeus' request for a Syrian chit-chat. Spencer Ackerman thinks this is dumb of the White House, and I'm inclined to agree:
According to ABC, Petraeus believes the Syrians can be cleaved away
from the Iranian sphere of influence, which would give the U.S. much
more leverage in dealing with Iran. Instead, the Bush administration
chose to keep relations frosty and to assassinate an al-Qaeda in Iraq
leader across the border into Syria, an act that the Syrians
understandably find to be an affront, coupled with a "warning"
to the Syrians about "clean[ing] up the global threat that is in your
back yard," in the words of one senior official. Now, it may be that
killing Abu Ghadiya was the right thing to do. If so, the much more
productive course would have been for Petraeus or another U.S. emissary
to establish some path of outreach to smooth over rough U.S.-Syrian
patches like this one.
I wanted to comment on another point that Spencer alludes to, which is that it's clear from this story that John McCain should never have tried to make David Petraeus an unwilling surrogate in his campaign. For someone who McCain claims would be among his most trusted counselors, the General doesn't seem to agree with McCain on much of anything. From the relentless sloganeering about Iraq, to the absurldy simplistic strategy for Afghanistan, and now the silly policy of refusing to engage with a country that has given every indication of its willingess to jump on the western wagon, McCain has taken positions that don't at all jive with Petraeus'.
Faced with this series of disconnects, you could conclude one of two things - either that Petraeus views McCain's chosen positions as strategically thin and would rather not be associated with them or that McCain embraced Petraeus purely for political purposes without any
mind to what the General actually thought about anything. One or the other - you pick.