David Petraeus is the most respected general officer the U.S. Army has produced since Colin Powell, and possibly since Dwight Eisenhower.

Rachel Kleinfeld, the executive director of the Truman National Security Project, may be a late entrant to the campaign to apotheosize a general who doesn't need hyperbole, but in the Winter issue of Democracy: a Journal of Ideas she proves herself an energetic booster. Kleinfeld argues that Petraeus should be seen as a progressive hero for bringing down the level of violence in Iraq through a strategy of protecting the Iraqi population. "However progressives feel about the decision to enter the Iraq War," she writes, "we should own its success."

Kleinfeld--like many of the liberal hawks now clamoring to claim the Iraq war a success--misunderstands both progressive national security principles, as well as the issues at stake with the ascendancy of counterinsurgency theory and practice.

Kleinfeld's case for Petraeus as a progressive hero oozes contempt for actually existing progressives. She first applauds Petraeus for recognizing that military power alone was insufficient for a problem like Iraq and that political progress was the key--meaning that civilian U.S. agencies had crucial roles to play, which she calls "another long-held progressive belief." Add to that a population-centric focus, "just as progressives wished to do in Darfur, Rwanda and Tibet." From these premises, Kleinfeld treats the progressives who opposed the surge as apostates. "Despite its [progressive] provenance, Petraeus' strategy was rejected by MoveOn and other leading progressive voices," she writes. Those progressives "rationalized away their belief in principles such as preventing genocide" in order not to "grant Bush a political victory."

In order to condemn antiwar progressives, Kleinfeld distinguishes between ending the war and "winning the war"--an empty term that she never bothers to define--which raises the question of why the war is worth "winning." The idea that progressives should champion a kinder, gentler occupation instead of heeding the clear wishes of a populace that never asked to be placed under the rule of a foreign power is many things, but it is certainly not progressive.

Kleinfeld makes a further argument about counterinsurgency, one that is becoming increasingly faddish. "With the bogeyman of George W. Bush out of the way," she writes, "progressives must re-embrace our own distinctive counterinsurgency strategy." Presuming a natural unity between progressivism and counterinsurgency is a category error. Counterinsurgency is, ideologically, value-neutral. There will be times when progressive goals dictate the application of counterinsurgency. There will also be times when counterinsurgency stands at cross purposes with progressivism.

One example from the surge demonstrates the point. In early 2007, to combat cross-sectarian violence, Petraeus and his brain trust opted to build huge cement blast walls on the seams of flashpoint neighborhoods. That followed good counterinsurgency practices of separating combatants. But the locals viewed it as enforced ethnic homogenization, and Petraeus proceeded with his plan despite loud protests from Iraqis. How progressive is that?

While counterinsurgency can afford to be agnostic to the legitimacy of a given insurgency and a given government, progressivism--insofar as it defines itself by a foundational commitment to justice--cannot be. Americans have to think hard about what sort of counterinsurgency capability they wish to truly build within both their military and their civilian national-security apparatus; progressives need to think hardest of all.

There is also a political temptation to misapply the lessons of particular successes. The U.S. military in Afghanistan, for instance, is recruiting tribal militias in the hope that what worked among the Sunni tribes in Anbar will also work for the Pashtun tribes along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border--even though the circumstances that fueled an indigenous Sunni rebellion in Iraq are entirely absent in Afghanistan. Appropriating the surge for progressive messaging purposes without regard for broader questions of either long-term strategy or progressivism is an invitation to the foreign-policy debacles of the future, this time under a Democratic president.

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A longer version of this article appears in the Spring 2009 issue of Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

Spencer Ackerman is a senior reporter for The Washington Independent, where he writes an ongoing series about counterinsurgency.