We've been hearing lots of feedback from MoveOn members about the Petraeus ad. Most MoveOn members liked it, but there have been some folks who've questioned why we targeted General Petraeus or chose the language we did. (You can see the full ad and the citations that back up each claim it contains here). The ad has also been the target of a concerted right-wing smear campaign (read this Huffington Post article for more on that).
So we wanted to share some of the thinking behind the ad.
New: Strategist George Lakoff has written a new essay on the"betrayal of trust" theme that we introduced in the Petraeus ad. A shorter version appears in the Huffington Post.
Unfortunately, just as we predicted in the ad, General Petraeus presented cherry-picked facts and misleading data to sell the idea that the surge is working. There are too many distortions and omissions to list here. But here are some sources that describe the ways in which the General stretched the truth:
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Congress has been relying on the General for an unvarnished picture of the facts on the ground. Unfortunately, he offered a twisted version of the truth designed to support prolonging the war. If his claims are accepted as fact, many Iraqis and Americans will die as a result. That is indeed a betrayal of both Congress and the American people.
President Bush’s credibility is almost gone. That’s why he’s remained in the background this week, and relied on General Petraeus to deliver the message that things are getting better. This works as long as people in Washington are afraid to question the General’s credibility.
But the truth is, the General does have a history of overstating the case for progress for political reasons. For example, just before the 2004 election he wrote a Washington Post op-ed claiming widespread gains in Iraq, which was widely viewed as a tacit endorsement of Bush.
And though he said this week’s report was his and his alone, the Washington Post has documented that he been coordinating extensively with top White House political operatives. His outfit joined daily conference calls with the White House and former RNC chairman Ed Gillespie this summer to "map out ways of selling the surge." The Post reported that Gillespie's White House political unit was "hard-wired" to Petraeus' military unit.
As long as General Petraeus is “untouchable” the President can continue to hide behind him. That’s why the public needs to know that Petraeus is neither objective nor trustworthy when it comes to assessing progress in Iraq.
The language of the ad was intended to be both hard-hitting and catchy. The truth about the mainstream media is that the kind of analyses with which some of us feel more comfortable don’t generate enough attention or news coverage to shift the debate.
Phrases like “General Betray Us” are “sticky”—that is, they get repeated again and again in the media—because they are so memorable. It was precisely because this ad was controversial and the language in it was “sticky” that the allegations at its core were widely discussed.
Moreover, every word of the ad was entirely accurate—the General has in fact cooked the books, and in doing so, he betrayed the public trust.
The ad certainly caused quite a stir in Washington D.C. Republicans went on the attack, and some Democrats distanced themselves from it. MoveOn came in for plenty of criticism.
But the ad was successful in what it was intended to do: Call the credibility of Petraeus’ testimony into question. It garnered more coverage than any ad that MoveOn.org has run in years. Every time Republicans debated the ad, they helped raise questions around reliability of the General’s report.
As Petraeus’ testimony continued on Wednesday, politicians on both sides of the aisle repeatedly made the same point we did in the ad: The numbers don’t add up. The surge isn’t working.
In the end, we believe the ad helped ensure that one of the dominant questions asked about Petraeus’ testimony was, “is it true?”
MoveOn is a member-driven organization. There will always be moments where consensus is impossible, but if MoveOn members don’t feel good in general about what we’re all doing together, MoveOn simply can’t function. That’s why we take the concerns of every member very seriously.
If you have further questions or concerns, you can contact MoveOn.org Executive Director Eli Pariser at elijahpariser@moveon.org.