Quote of the Day 
November 14, 2012

' Petraeus's Icarus flight began when he set himself
above President Obama.

'Accustomed to being a demigod, expert at polishing
his own celebrity and swaying public opinion,
Petraeus did not accept the new president's desire to
head for the nearest exit ramp on Afghanistan in
2009. The general began lobbying for a surge in
private sessions with reporters and undercutting the
president, who was trying to make a searingly hard
call.

'Petraeus rolled the younger commander in chief
into going ahead with a bound-to-fail surge in
Afghanistan, just as, half a century earlier, the C.I.A.
had rolled Jack Kennedy into going ahead with the
bound-to-fail Bay of Pigs scheme. Both missions
defied logic, but the untested presidents put aside
their own doubts and instincts, caving to
experience.

'Once in Afghanistan, Petraeus welcomed prominent
conservative hawks from Washington think tanks.
As Greg Jaffe wrote in The Washington Post, they
were "given permanent office space at his
headquarters and access to military aircraft to tour
the battlefield. They provided advice to field
commanders that sometimes conflicted with orders
the commanders were getting from their immediate
bosses."

'So many more American kids and Afghanistan
civilians were killed and maimed in a war that went
on too long. That's the real scandal. '

Columnist Maureen Dowd 
New York Times
November 14, 2012

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