General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker are being grilled by the Senate Armed Services Committee as we speak (watch here on C-SPAN), and will appear before the Foreign Relations Committee this afternoon. The counterinsurgency blog Abu Muqawama has an interesting list of questions for senators to ask. This, in particular, would be a good one, though I'd be surprised if anyone actually posed it:
Recently, your image and person has been appropriated by conservative groups such as Freedom’s Watch to support the policies of the Bush Administration. Although there is little you can do about such groups from Baghdad, it is hard to imagine George C. Marshall having allowed his image and person to have been similarly used for political purposes during the Second World War. Do you worry that you, personally, are being politicized by the administration and its supporters?
It's a little curious that despite the apparently widespread belief that Petraeus might have an interest in a future career in Republican politics, we know essentially nothing about how the general himself feels about that possibility.
--Josh Patashnik