Petraeus can take care of himself

The $65,000 that MoveOn.org invested in its full page “General Betray Us” ad in The New York Times is surely the best money that liberal Democratic and vociferously anti-war organization ever spent.

With the generous assistance of President Bush and the Senate Republicans, this once-obscure organization, knowledge of whose existence was largely confined to hard-core political junkies, reaped a millionfold in publicity on its investment.

The provocative headline was a sophomoric wordplay, “General Petraeus or General Betray Us.” And the subhead accused our top commander in Iraq of “Cooking the books for the White House,” that is, using misleading figures to make the war seem to be going better than it in fact is. The text of the ad was more measured and its conclusion, “Iraq is mired in an unwinnable religious civil war,” was debatable but not totally unreasonable. But nobody was reading past the headline.

Bush enters fray

At his White House press conference, Bush was delighted to be asked about the ad — “disgusting,” he said — and even more delighted to tee off on the Democrats, who, the president said, “are more afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org ... than they are of irritating the United States military.” You can’t buy publicity like this.

However, even as the president was speaking, many Senate Democrats were rushing to distance themselves from the ad, several of them signing on to a Republican resolution denouncing the ad as a personal attack on Petraeus.

Even Bush got into the act: “It’s one thing to attack me; it’s another thing to attack somebody like General Petraeus.” And that was one of the odder aspects of the whole business, a cordon of elderly politicians gathering protectively around Petraeus as if he were a sensitive Boy Scout with easily bruised feelings. The man is an Army Ranger, an airborne officer. He has a Bronze Star. He can take care of himself.

Scripps Howard News Service