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have untold other spouses, children and loved ones as their troopers have deployed and continued to raise their right hands time and time again. Clearly, our families are the unsung heroes of the long campaigns on which we have been embarked over the past decade.”
    He closed with a flourish. “One of America’s greatest presidents, Teddy Roosevelt, once observed that far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. There are currently nearly 140,000 coalition troopers and over 235,000 Afghan security force members engaged in hard work very much worth doing in Afghanistan,” Petraeus said. “If I am confirmed by the Senate, it will be a great privilege to soldier with them in that hard work that is so worth doing in that country.”
    Petraeus had spent hours preparing for this testimony and, beyond the Republican attempt to attack Obama, was not anticipating tough questions from either side. He’d been in this seat many times before. He also commanded the high ground. Both Obama and his Republican opponents were committed to salvaging the war effort in Afghanistan, if not prevailing outright.
    Levin began the questioning. “General, you’ve commented on these questions in your testimony, and I want to ask them again to get very clear, direct answers to them. Two fundamental elements of the Afghanistan strategy that the president announced in December 2009 are, first, a surge of thirty thousand additional U.S. troops by the end of the summer to help regain the initiative and, second, the setting of a July 2011 date for the beginning of the reduction in our combat presence in Afghanistan, with the pace of a reasonable drawdown to be determined by the circumstances at that time. Do you agree with the president’s policy?”
    â€œI do,” Petraeus said.
    â€œDo you agree that the setting of that July 2011 date to begin reductions signals urgency to Afghan leaders that they must more and more take responsibility for their country’s security, which is important for success of the mission in Afghanistan?”
    â€œI do,” Petraeus said.
    But McCain, who went next in the questioning, was undeterred.
    â€œGeneral, at any time during the deliberations that the military shared with the president when he went through the decision-making process, was there a recommendation from you or anyone in the military that we set a date of July 2011?”
    â€œThere was not,” Petraeus said.
    â€œThere was not by any military person that you know of?”
    â€œNot that I’m aware of,” Petraeus said.
    McCain appeared to have found a way to cleave the general from the president, but Petraeus had merely stated a fact, not a point of policy disagreement. Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and a reserve military colonel, continued the assault.
    Hadn’t Vice President Joseph Biden, Graham asked, been quoted as saying, “Come July we’re going to begin to leave in large numbers—you can bet on it”?
    Petraeus tried to answer, but Graham, pressing his point, cut him off twice. Finally, Petraeus explained that Biden had expressed his full support of the administration’s Afghan policy during a National Security Council meeting immediately after Obama tapped him to command the war. What’s more, Petraeus said, Defense secretary Gates had recently told Congress in testimony that he’d never heard Biden say that—and neither had Petraeus.
    As he told Senator Jack Reed, the Rhode Island Democrat, who asked him at another point in the hearing about Obama’s planned drawdown in July 2011: “Let me be very clear, if I could, Senator. Not only did I say that I supported it, I said that I agreed with it. This is, again, an agreement that was made back . . . in the fall of last year, based on projections about conditions that we hoped we’d obtain, that we were