Petraeus, MoveOn, Kabuki

Ian Welsh comments at The Agonist on the MoveOn censure motion in the Senate, which is about the best commentary that I've seen.

I've been largely out of commission this week, so I'm catching up on this. There has been a certain amount of posting to the effect that "The MoveOn ad was stupid but. . . ." which, as I recall, all seems to come from the Beltway insiders -- Sullivan, Yglesias, and the like, which is just buying into the right-wing talking points while pretending to support MoveOn. I haven't seen the ad, so I don't know if it was stupid or not. In concept, it certainly was not -- Petraeus is a liar, if I may be so unvarnished, who has a reputation for cooking the books on his activities to make himself look good, with in this case the added luster of having been groomed as a poster boy for Bush's War. I won't go into Bush's unbelievable remarks on the issue in any detail -- Keith Olberman did much too good a job on that -- except to point out that he's adding to the major new mantra: the generals are beyond criticism.

Bullshit. There is nothing and no one in this country beyond criticism. Period

John Cornyn (R-Neverneverland) introduced the resolution, which is a transparent political ploy and, although the article in the Baltimore Sun cites "genuine outrage," I'm not buying it. Republican outrage is a political tactic, and there's seldom anything genuine about it. Cornyn is a tool, pure and simple. What's appalling is that 22 Democrats went along with it because it put them in a "difficult political sitution." By all means, let the minority party dictate the rules of the game. Morons.
.
Petraeus' testimony, as far as I can tell, was a set-up from the get-go. The White House wrote his report. He met with the president before testifying. He's testifying on what is essentially his own policy.

What the hell did anyone expect?

Read Welsh's analysis. It seems to cover all the bases. And then read this post by Digby, which starts off with a quote from Paul Kkrugman that wraps it all up:

To a remarkable extent, punditry has taken a pass on whether Gen. Petraeus’s picture of the situation in Iraq is accurate. Instead, it was all about the theatrics – about how impressive he looked, how well or poorly his Congressional inquisitors performed.

There's a reason we're seeing more and more the word "kabuki" in relation to Congress. I'd be willing to extend the term to public discourse as a whole -- it's not about the substance any more -- in fact, that's pretty much forbidden territory. It's all about the costumes.