McCain and Palin should learn from Petraeus

General Petraeus, the man who seems to be the saviour of Iraq, is beginning to be compared to the great soldier statesman, General Dwight Eisenhower, who went on to become President of the United States.

Like Eisenhower, Petraeus is essentially a pacific warrior who cannot only inflict wounds but also, with equal skill, bind them up. Following Eisenhower's example, Petraeus discourages vocal declarations of victory. Indeed, according to an illuminating article in the Daily Telegraph, he judges rhetorical restraint as one of the secrets of his unique success in bringing a measure of peace at last to Iraq.

Then what do I find on another page in the same Telegraph. I find Sarah Palin, Senator McCain's running mate, using the very same triumphalist V word that Petraeus deplores. She is quoted as saying "you have to be committed to victory in the war on terror".

Of course there is nothing essentially wrong with saying that. In the past commanders in war did talk about victory. Winston Churchill never stopped doing so. But what was right then is wrong now. In the current battle for hearts and minds, it sends out the wrong vibes which the terrorists can exploit to their own ends. Indeed President Bush himself now shies away from the word, having at last realised what harm earlier use of it has done.

This tells us, I fear, that Senator McCain and Sarah Palin are worryingly out of date, wedded to a way of thinking and talking, which, to sensitive ears, harks back to the colonial age, rather in the same way as the conqueror of Japan General Douglas Macarthur's bellicose language after World War II also struck dangerously the wrong note.

Thankfully Eisenhower, not Macarthur, became president. ·