THE MAN BEING SENT to direct the organization and training of local police and security forces in Iraq is Major General David Petraeus. His duties, the Washington Post recently reported, will include overseeing the demobilization of the various Kurdish and Shiite armed militias, and their integration into the Iraqi security forces. With this task, Petraeus has been entrusted with a major component of the Coalition’s exit strategy. He aims to nurture the strength of Iraqi forces, allowing for the withdrawal of Coalition troops. And he sounds like the right man for the job.
MANY YEARS AGO, Battalion Commander David Petraeus found himself lying on a field in Fort Campbell, Kentucky–dying. A rifleman had tripped during a training exercise, accidentally firing an M-16 round which had blown through the right side of Petraeus’s chest and ripped out of his back. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. Petraeus was supposed to jump to the world’s hotspots, bravely commanding his soldiers in wartime or the uneasy peace that followed. He was meant to be among that small brotherhood of Army officers who had joined the battered United States Army in the immediate aftermath of the Vietnam War. He aimed to redesign the Army with the lessons of Vietnam in mind, to force it to recognize the importance of winning the “hearts and minds” of local citizens, and the necessity of being able to rebuild war zones as well as destroy them. A fiercely driven man, Petraeus willed himself to survive until surgeons were able to reach him. A decade later, Petraeus’s physical and mental toughness would be one of his most important qualities as he embarked on the biggest challenge of his career: the reconstruction of Northern Iraq.
