Best Defense
Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

Jaffe’s sober assessment of Petraeus

This is worth reading. "Petraeus’s experience over the past decade shows that generals are not immune to the strain. They get used up, too," writes Greg Jaffe. I have heard Petraeus’ tour in Afghanistan referred to as his "fat Elvis" period, an unkind way of saying that he was tired and not on his A-game ...

By , a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy.
Wikimedia
Wikimedia
Wikimedia

This is worth reading. "Petraeus's experience over the past decade shows that generals are not immune to the strain. They get used up, too," writes Greg Jaffe. I have heard Petraeus' tour in Afghanistan referred to as his "fat Elvis" period, an unkind way of saying that he was tired and not on his A-game there.

This is worth reading. "Petraeus’s experience over the past decade shows that generals are not immune to the strain. They get used up, too," writes Greg Jaffe. I have heard Petraeus’ tour in Afghanistan referred to as his "fat Elvis" period, an unkind way of saying that he was tired and not on his A-game there.

I suspect that in Iraq, Petraeus tried to work with local factors as points of leverage, while in Afghanistan, his campaign against corruption worked against local factors. But I don’t know the Afghan war well enough to assemble the evidence for that hunch. Can anyone enlighten me on this?

Thomas E. Ricks is a former contributing editor to Foreign Policy. Twitter: @tomricks1

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