The General's Dilemma.(Commanding General David Petraeus )

Early in 2007, when David Petraeus became Commanding General of United States and international forces in Iraq, he had in mind a strategy to manage the political pressures he would face because of the unpopularity of the war, then four years old, and of its author, George W. Bush. He pledged to be responsive to "both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue"--to his Commander-in-Chief in the White House, of course, but also to antiwar Democrats on Capitol Hill. Petraeus earned a doctoral degree at Princeton University in 1987; the title of his dissertation was "The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam." In thinking about how to cope with political divisions in the United States over Iraq, he was influenced, he told me recently, by Samuel Huntington's 1957 book "The Soldier and the State," which argues that civilian control over the military can best be achieved when uniformed officers regard themselves as impartial professionals. Petraeus is registered to vote as a Republican in New Hampshire--he once described himself to a friend as a northeastern Republican, in the tradition of Nelson Rockefeller--but he said that around 2002, after he became a two-star general, he stopped voting. As he departed for Baghdad, to oversee a "surge" deployment of additional American troops to Iraq, he sought, as he recalled it, "to try to avoid being pulled in one direction or another, to be in a sense used by one side or the other." He added, "That's very hard to do, because you become at some point sort of the face of the war, the face of the surge. So be it. You just have to deal with that."

On September 10, 2007, Petraeus awoke at his stateside home at Fort Meyer, Virginia, which is on a hill above Arlington Cemetery. The General went for a morning run and tried "to get my game face on," as he recalled it. He was scheduled to appear before Congress that day to offer the first comprehensive assessment of whether his leadership had yet fostered any progress in Iraq. Petraeus regarded these hearings, he remembered, as "the oral exam of one's life." Partisan debate over the war had grown even more intense since his appointment; the Bush Administration, for its part, had entered its late Karl Rove period, characterized by rococo flourishes--the White House had insured, for example, that Petraeus's first critical testimony about the surge would coincide with the anniversary of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001.

After his workout, Petraeus donned a dress uniform bearing nine rows of ribbons. Someone called his attention to a full-page advertisement that had been placed in that morning's Times by MoveOn, the liberal activist group. The ad featured the General's photograph above the headline "GENERAL PETRAEUS OR GENERAL BETRAY US?" It accused him of "cooking the books" for the Bush White House. The Iraq conflict was "unwinnable," the advertisement argued; it also claimed that some of Petraeus's past accounts of progress there had been "at war with the facts."

When we met recently in Iraq, I asked Petraeus if that ad in the Times had marked the low point of his personal experience in this command. It had not, he said; coping with the deaths of soldiers had been considerably more difficult. He added, however, that he rarely feels stress at all, an assertion supported by his appearance: at the age of fifty-five, he has a lightly lined face and chestnut hair that is barely marked by gray. When he does experience an occasional spike in his blood pressure, he said, it is usually caused by an unexpected event, particularly on the battlefield. By contrast, in Washington, he remarked, referring to the city's culture of political ambush, "you know what's coming."

When the General arrived on Capitol Hill to testify that September day, some Democrats poured their frustrations out on him, as if he had been the war's creator. "How many more names will be added to the wall before we admit it is time to leave?" Representative Robert Wexler, of Florida, demanded at the first of three hearings before House and Senate committees. "How many more names, General?"

Bright lights illuminated the cavernous room, and the elevated faces of congressmen produced a disorienting sensation, Petraeus remembered. "It becomes an out-of-body experience very, very quickly," he said. "You can start to feel yourself sort of looking down at this guy who's reading this statement or answering questions. You have to actually work very hard to stay focussed. . . . They don't have comfortable chairs. You can't adjust the height. You have to sit on the edge of them. Actually, I really had back pain, which I don't normally have, just from sitting there for ten hours that first day. So it was just something to be endured, candidly."

Victory Base Complex, the headquarters of Multi-National Force-Iraq, lies to the west of Baghdad on an eroded wasteland crossed by marshy canals. It is a vast military-industrial park, resembling a northern New Jersey superfund site. Fuel and dust scent the air; helicopters thump overhead. About fifty thousand people inhabit Victory, making it one of the largest of sixty-one American bases in Iraq. (There are also about two hundred and fifty smaller American outposts and facilities in the country.) Victory's main dining hall, the Oasis, is the size of an airplane hangar; it is organized on a sports theme, with separate salons for fans of the National Football League and Major League Baseball.