Le général Petraeus marche-t-il sur l’eau?

Lorsque le général Petraeus était passé à l’OTAN, au printemps dernier, l’une des questions que se posaient les uns et les autres était de savoir si cet homme de 55 ans n’avait pas subi un traitement comme il en existe parfois tant son apparence physique est peu ordinaire pour un homme de son âge: «C’est tout juste si on lui donnerait entre 35 et 40 ans…», confiait une source sans doute spécialisée dans les problèmes de maintien en bonne forme des forces.

Aujourd’hui, Petraeus est comme une bouée de sauvetage pour GW Bush. Le 15 juillet dernier, l’homme du Pentagone (à tous égards: spécialiste et ami du Pentagone, et admirateur de Petraeus) au Washington Post, Thomas E. Ricks, notait :

«Bush has mentioned Petraeus at least 150 times this year in his speeches, interviews and news conferences, often setting him up in opposition to members of Congress.

»“It seems to me almost an act of desperation, the administration turning to the one most prominent official who cannot act politically and whose credibility is so far unsullied, someone who is or should be purely driven by the facts of the situation,” said Richard Kohn, a specialist in U.S. military history at the University of North Carolina. “What it tells me, given the hemorrhaging of support in Congress, is that we're entering some new phase of the end game.”»

Le même jour, dans le New York Times, William Kristoll, qui nous annonce une victoire prochaine en Irak, affirmait que GW Bush avait trouvé en Petraeus son Ulysses S. Grant, — après avoir pédalé entre divers McClellan en allant d'échec en échec. (McClellan a la réputation, un peu injustifiée, d’avoir été le plus mauvais commandant des armées nordistes affrontant les armées de Virginie du général Lee ; par contraste, U.S. Grant, choisi en désespoir de cause par Lincoln, fut l’homme de la victoire de 1865 avant de devenir, en 1872, le président d’une des administrations les plus corrompues de l’histoire des USA.)

Bref, on ne parle plus, à Washington, que du général Petraeus. A tel point que Jeff Huber, un ancien pilote de l’U.S. Navy devenu commentateur, a pris sa plume pour s’interroger, avec une certaine circonspection, à propos de «The Cult of Petraeus» (sur Military.com le 7 août). Effectivement, le terme correspond bien au phénomène en cours à Washington, qui devrait atteindre son apogée en septembre, lorsque le général-miracle viendra présenter au Congrès son rapport sur la situation en Irak. C’est une situation très particulière, qui semble faire dépendre aujourd’hui la perception de l'évolution des événements en Irak d’un seul homme, — dont Jeff Huber nous révèle qu’il n’est pas encore parvenu à marcher sur l’eau:

«Supporters of Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, hail him as our best and brightest military officer and one who knows how to conduct counter-insurgency warfare. His detractors seem of the opinion that the thing Petraeus knows how to do best is make himself look good.

»While some praise Petraeus for his administration of Mosul and Ninevah after major hostilities ceased, others blame him for allowing the insurgency to establish itself in those areas. His tenure as the officer in charge of training Iraqi troops and police clearly did not go well, despite his praise in a 2004 Washington Post article titled “Battling for Iraq” of the progress being made by the fledgling Iraqi security forces under his tutelage. Of the article, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman wrote “General Petraeus, without saying anything falsifiable, conveyed the totally misleading impression, highly convenient for his political masters, that victory was just around the corner.” It also appears that Petraeus is at least partly responsible for arming of Iraq's insurgent groups. According to a recently released Government Accountability Office report, the Pentagon has lost track of roughly 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols that were issued to Iraqi forces while Petraeus was in charge of their training. More than 200,000 pieces of body armor and helmets distributed to Iraqis during that period are also unaccounted for.

»As the U.S. four-star in charge of Iraq, Petraeus has shown a definite penchant for public relations, having staged a record setting Fourth of July reenlistment ceremony and a congressional shopping spree through an outdoor market in Baghdad, and treating journalists to an aerial tour of the city's soccer games. Pentagon correspondent Thomas E. Ricks, a Petraeus fan, refers to the general as a “force of nature,” and often cites Petraeus's fondness for challenging soldiers half his age to one-arm pushup contests. Like Ricks, I'm impressed that a general in his mid-fifties can outdo fit men half his age in tests of physical fitness, but all the one-arm pushups in the world won't fix what's broken in Iraq.

«It's not my purpose to run Petraeus down for the fun of it. Let's face it, nobody makes it to level he has reached in the military without making a few enemies or mistakes, or without a certain flair for flash and self promotion. My point is that General Petraeus may be able to walk on his hands, but he can't walk on water — as Mr. Bush seems to want us to think.»

Mis en ligne le 10 août 2007 à 20H03