A moment of sober honesty. Guest post by University of Minnesota political science professor Jeff Lomonaco:

David Petraeus' striking refusal the other day to affirm that achieving the objectives he is pursuing in Iraq will make the U.S. safer deserves a little closer scrutiny. I think it reflects not that he has not thought about the question, but that he has genuine doubts about whether the entire war was a mistake. Nor did his subsequent modification of his answer, acting at the behest or request of the White House, remove those doubts.

Petraeus' initial response to Sen. Warner that he did not know if success in Iraq would make the U.S. safer can be explained neither by fatigue nor by the notion that Petraeus has focused exclusively on the mission in front of him. Any member of the Bush administration, no matter how tired, would know, whatever complexities you embed in the substance of the response, the lede is, "Yes, without doubt." Petraeus is also a smart and thoughtful guy surrounded by smart and thoughtful people, many of whom have devoted much time and energy to considering the larger effort to make the U.S. safer by targeting terrorists that threaten us and winning hearts and minds globally. It's just not credible that Petraeus has focused so narrowly on his mission that he has not thought about the larger strategy and policy of which it is a part. Furthermore, it is known that some of those around Petraeus view the Iraq war altogether as a terrible mistake foisted on us by misguided neoconservatives. It's not much of a stretch to imagine that Petraeus shares that view, however much those same neoconservatives serve as the base for his envisioned presidential plans.

Petraeus' subsequent modification of his answer, after hearing concerns from the White House during a break in the hearings, in fact bolsters that idea. Because when Petraeus used a question from Sen. Bayh to say that yes, achieving our objectives in Iraq would make us safer, he had clearly changed the baseline of comparison. His answer to Bayh took the policy of going to war as a given, and, focusing on Iraq alone, made the obvious point that success will be better for our national security than failure. The very fact that he did not say this initially in response to Sen. Warner suggests that he was using as his baseline of comparison the very decision to go to war itself.

There is no question that there has been far too much, and far too personalized, attention on Petraeus. His views are only one contribution to the debate about what we should do in Iraq, and in the world. But it is overstatement to say that his advice on Iraq is almost useless. Surely it is very useful to learn that the commander of our forces in Iraq, and the man behind whom the President has hidden, has doubts about whether the war in Iraq was a mistake because it may have made us less safe.

Lomonaco is co-author of The United States v. I. Lewis Libby. He can be reached here.