I revised and extended — way extended — some of the thoughts in this post over at the Washington Independent after John McCain’s stunt to compel McChrystal to testify flopped. And I think they’re worth recapitulating. The New York Times, I think, fucked this story up, even down to a slight misquotation.

While the Times quoted McChrystal saying, about his resource request, “I think if you don’t align the goals and the resources, you will have a significant problem. If we don’t do that, we will,” it left off the preceding part of his answer:

I think any decision to go forward will not just be based on resources, it will be based on what are our goals. And I know people are re-looking what our goals and objectives are and redefining and clarifying those, and I think that’s helpful. Once they do that, I think the resources, of course, are linked to that, because obviously you have to have a ways and means match. So, I don’t think that if we align our goals and our resources, we will have a significant problem. Our problem would be as — if we didn’t.

Still not convinced? Want another quote? OK: “This is a necessary process we go through so we come to a clear decision, and then move forward, and I think once we make that decision — once he makes that decision, in concert with our international partners — then I think we’ll be in a much stronger position.”

Or how about this? When asked if he would “circumvent” some caveats placed by European parliaments on the use of their troops, he said, “I’m certainly not going to circumvent any political leadership, because at the end of the day, political leadership and the people are who I work for, and I’m proud to do that. I think the more deliberations we have, the more debate we have, the healthier this is gonna be. Because at the end of the day, we would be in much worse shape to have a decision made without that level of public debate.” You listening, Karl? Because McChrystal rebuked your old boss, not his current one.

 So where’m I going with this? Here:

This is a strange place for the politics of national security. The minority party is hoping that McChrystal will somehow decide that it’s in his interest to throw his chips in with a powerless party rather than exercise the responsibilities of his command and cultivate a constructive relationship with both parties. It’s that kind of thinking that led John McCain to become the 44th president of the United States, partnering with Mitch McConnell’s 60-seat Senate majority.

And for its part, there are even some on the progressive side who misinterpret recent McChrystal interviews to fit into some desired insubordination narrative, whereby Obama — and by extension, the progressive movement — is absolved of responsibility for the war because of the nefarious machinations of a revanchist military. None of this is remotely true. And McChrystal’s remarks in London, read in their full context, prove it.

Some of this, I think, proceeds from a misunderstanding of David Petraeus’ role during the surge. Musing on McChrystal, Bernard Finel wrote, "Petraeus’ intervention in domestic politics during the Bush years was close to unprecedented in American politics. And it was dangerous. And instead of trying to institutionalize the Petraeus aberration, we should be on the look-out to prevent its recurrence."

There needs to be some stress placed on that. Petraeus was an energetic advocate for a strategy he was hired to implement, and which he had done a great deal of intellectual spadework to engender. But he did not "intervene" in domestic politics. If anything, Petraeus’ famous testimony in September of 2007 occurred at the behest of congressional Democrats, who compelled that testimony because they thought, mistakenly, that the surge would be such an obvious disaster that Petraeus would have no choice but to say so in testimony and the final Bush effort at escalation would shatter.

Now look: I thought the exact same thing. And when Petraeus started reporting progress on ethno-sectarian violence, I worked like hell at TPMmuckraker to see if Petraeus was juking the stats. When I FOIA’d to get Petraeus’ methodology, I was surprised to find it was… pretty sensible. And at that point I was forced to conclude that there was actual security progress being made. (Did that compel me to Support The Surge? No, because that larger strategic decision was and is a separate question. But it did compel me to revise my assumptions and previously-held shibboleths about the surge.)

All of this is a far cry, you’ll notice, from Petraeus playing an unprecedented or dangerous role in domestic politics. The way the GOP used Petraeus is a separate question, and he’s not responsible for that. What was Petraeus’ role in the 2008 election? I see two incidents that might qualify: releasing a picture of him smiling in a helicopter with Obama in the summer, and then speaking out obliquely in favor of some aspects of Obama’s foreign policy in the fall. That’s not much intervention, and it’s really not progressive subterfuge. (And that, by the way, got me to reconsider the assumptions behind this dumb column about Petraeus running for president, even though I had good reason to write it.) It’s good — very good — to be vigilant about keeping flag officers out of politics. But I see little evidence that anything Petraeus did rises to the standard set by, say, Adm. William Crowe’s endorsement of Bill Clinton in 1992, or Gen. Colin Powell’s frequent policy pronouncements against the Clinton agenda.

Anyway. This has gone on long enough, and I look forward to a spirited debate in comments.