Pat/Rick, I've only met Petraeus once personally, at the memorial service for my BC in Fallujah, but I served under his policies on 2 tours in Iraq. He is a smart man, well educated and definitely exposed to alot of cultural insight, and I too was hopeful. But having been around a lot of smart men, well educated, and culturally astute, there are schools of bias within those as well, and I believe Petraeus has bought into a politically expedient fiction - a very popular one, and a comforting one. In my role I have witnessed countless smart, strong, experienced warriors buy into small fictions to make them feel better about what they do. I can understand it at the personal level, but not at the level of policy.
If you consider his policies in Iraq, it was based on the belief that the way ahead for Iraq was reconciliation between the factions, under the umbrella of a western democracy. While that may be true, that Iraq should reconcile, this thread started with a link to an article that disputes its relationship with reality. To then take that same concept and overlay it over an even more politically fragmented region (Iraqis at least understood cooperation under an iron fist) expecting different results is just ... well, crazy.
I think the world would be a better place if everyone came to Jesus ... lots of folks do. That is not however a wise guiding thought for the development of national security strategy and policies in theater given present reality, and definitely not an appropriate use of military power. I humbly suggest that the odds of reconciliation in Afghanistan or Iraq are on par with the odds that the same two countries would convert to Christianity en masse.
