Challenging The Slanderers
By Marty Conatser - The American Legion National Commander
When the term “betray” is used to describe any American general not named Benedict Arnold, it gets most people’s attention. When it is used in a New York Times advertisement to describe a brilliant wartime commander with the credentials of David A. Petraeus, it gets the 2.7 million member American Legion’s attention.
I met Gen. Petraeus when I visited Iraq earlier this summer. That I was impressed with this visionary officer is unsurprising and relatively unimportant. What is important is that the men and women serving under Gen. Petraeus believe in him. Their faith in the uniformed Princeton Ph.D. is not misplaced. Petraeus earned a reputation as a counterinsurgency genius early in the Iraq war when he commanded the 101st Airborne Division and basically rebuilt the government infrastructures in Mosul and Ninevah Provinces. As he mentioned in his congressional testimony, sectarian violence in Iraq is down - especially in the once wild Anbar Province. Local tribes are turning on al Qaeda and in many cases cooperating with the coalition. When one senator said Gen. Petraeus’s firsthand report required “a willing suspension of disbelief,” it seemed to this Midwesterner that it was Washington’s way of calling him a liar.
