“General David Petraeus, one of the great military leaders in American history, who took us from defeat to victory in Iraq, one of the great leaders…”

-Sen. John McCain, August 18, 2008, Saddleback Civil Forum on the Presidency, Lake Forest, California.

Take that, Stonewall Jackson, Robert E. Lee, Patton, Ike, George Washington, and Ulysses S. Grant! This guy who’s strategy is totally like, “I’m going to put a cop on every corner, and then when all the prostitutes hide, I’m gonna declare a victory over prostitution!” is ranked right up there among you.

I don’t know about you, but I noticed McCain spent a lot of time yesterday talking about the experience and wisdom to lead our troops in yesterday’s debate. Not his own or Senator Obama’s, but the experience and wisdom of that dreamy, handsome, greatest of all American heroes, David Petraeus.

In total, McCain referenced Petraeus 6 times, each with that appeal-to-authority tone of the 5th-grader on the playground spouting off “well, my dad says the Red Sox are the best team ever!”

• “So there was a lot at stake there. And thanks to this great general, David Petraeus, and the troops who serve under him, they have succeeded. And we are winning in Iraq, and we will come home. And we will come home as we have when we have won other wars and not in defeat.”
• “I’m afraid Senator Obama doesn’t understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy. But the important — I’d like to tell you, two Fourths of July ago I was in Baghdad. General Petraeus invited Senator Lindsey Graham and me to attend a ceremony where 688 brave young Americans, whose enlistment had expired, were reenlisting to stay and fight for Iraqi freedom and American freedom.”
• “And also General Petraeus said the same thing. Osama bin Laden and General Petraeus have one thing in common that I know of, they both said that Iraq is the central battleground. Now General Petraeus has praised the successes, but he said those successes are fragile and if we set a specific date for withdrawal — and by the way, Senator Obama’s original plan, they would have been out last spring before the surge ever had a chance to succeed.”
• “So we’ve got a lot of work to do in Afghanistan. But I’m confident, now that General Petraeus is in the new position of command, that we will employ a strategy which not only means additional troops — and, by the way, there have been 20,000 additional troops, from 32,000 to 53,000, and there needs to be more.”
• “But the important thing is, if we suffer defeat in Iraq, which General Petraeus predicts we will, if we adopted Senator Obama’s set date for withdrawal, then that will have a calamitous effect in Afghanistan and American national security interests in the region. Senator Obama doesn’t seem to understand there is a connected between the two.”
• “And General Petraeus says we have had great success, but it’s very fragile. And we can’t do what Senator Obama wants to do.”

In fairness, Obama did mention Petraeus once:

• “They have done a brilliant job, and General Petraeus has done a brilliant job. But understand, that was a tactic designed to contain the damage of the previous four years of mismanagement of this war.”

You know what I think? I think during those long, hard hours as a fighter pilot superhero far from his lovely first wife or scandalous affairs, it got very lonely. And it turns out there was a handsome young fellow soldier with chestnut brown hair and buckteeth. No, no, not General Petraeus, but some long dead comrade-in-arms that offered some comfort to the confused, not-so-bright screw-up. David, I mean, Gen. Petraeus just takes McCain back to a time, is all.

Either that, or McCain is confused and thinks that Gen. Petraeus is running to be Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. armed forces.

Okay, joking and gay innuendo aside, McCain is making one very big mistake by constantly referencing Petraeus… he’s not showing leadership on the overall question of the war. The Commander of Central Command still takes direction from the President and not the other way around. Obama has already shown that he will consult advisers and make thoughtful and informed (i.e. not “gut instinct”) decisions, but he will instruct the General to start bringing our troops home from Iraq and putting more focus on Afghanistan, whereas McCain proposes no change in the overall strategy and direction of the war. In other words, Obama is for change, McCain is for four more years of the same failed policies of the Bush Administration. Every time McCain says “Gen. Petraeus” – we should add in “the commander of Bush’s war policies” in our heads.

After scanning some of the top reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, I suspect that people’s opinions about the war itself influence their overall enjoyment of the film. In particular, a lot of people were bothered that director Kimberly Pierce (Boys Don’t Cry) didn’t offer up solutions to the problem of the “back-door draft.” It didn’t bother me so much. This is a messy, complicated situation without easy answers. That doesn’t make it any less important to discuss.

Stop-Loss may not enter the pantheon of great war films, but I suspect that it will be a herald of the types of films we can expect about this war. Specifically as the relationship between the war and the folks back home is depicted. If WWII gave us the great hero stories (e.g. Patton, Saving Private Ryan, Bridge Over the River Kwai) and the horror of nuclear warfare (Dr. Stangelove); Vietnam gave us existential crisis (Apocalyspe Now), counter-culture (Hair), and the fallout of war (Born on the Fourth of July); and the Gulf War gave us career soldier who are a mix of mixed-up and patriotic (Jarheads, Courage Under Fire); the current occupation in Iraq is already yielding movies that are critical of the motivation and methods of the war while trying to present the soldiers themselves in a good light.

I’m not so sure I’m sold on this point of view. I’ve known some asshole soldiers whose notion of patriotism is about as complex as dog’s sense of loyalty. I’m not troop bashing here, I’m just saying that pretending all our troops are heroes to be admired is a mistake.

Anyway, what does all this have to do with the movie? Not much, except that I hope people seeing the movie will engage in more thoughtful and mature discussions of the war than we typically get on political punditry shows. Even my favorites like Real Time with Bill Maher and The Daily Show tend to beat a pretty simplistic drum on the subject.

The cast all did a great job, IMO, with the material they were given. At times a bit cliche, at times a bit sappy, the script was nonetheless emotional. There were a number of times I was tearing up at the movie. I’d have had less reluctance to flee to Canada than Phillipe’s character (not that it’s so easy in this war), but just as much rage and indignation.

In the end, I thought it was worth seeing the movie if it makes you think more about the burden we’re putting on our soldiers and the horrors of this war our current president is so reluctant to end.