Opinion

The fourth star

Petraeus for President? In Army parlance, David Petraeus is one high-speed, squared-away, hoo-ah fighting machine.

Petraeus emerges as the leader among leaders in “The Fourth Star,” a detailed inside analysis of four contemporary generals and the decisions that went right and wrong for them as their careers headed for Iraq.

This isn’t the book to read about the surge, but it sheds much light on “Peaches,” as Petraeus was known at West Point. He’s both alpha dog and publicity hound, having “acted as his own publicist” and won his doctrine accolades all the way from Pentagon correspondents to “The Daily Show.”

Petraeus has an ego. “It’s a combination of being the President and the Pope,” he once said as he gazed down on Iraq. But that he stepped on a few toes (including those of his boss George Casey) may be to his credit. Loyalty is central to Army thinking, but it can also produce battalions of yes-men.

When you combine Petraeus’s leadership in Iraq with his background, it is impossible not to be dazzled by this man of action — and his anti-Obama-ness. Though nicknamed “Doc” by his men — he took a master’s and PhD at Princeton — he is also the Rambo who, after being shot through the chest in a training accident that left him with a grapefruit-sized exit wound in his back, knocked out 50 pushups on the hospital floor to make the case for going back to work.

A big strength of this book is that the writers — Cloud is from Politico.com, Jaffe from the Washington Post — take a military point of view rather than sharp-shooting from the clueless perimeter .

Biographies of Petraeus — along with current Army Chief of Staff Casey, former head of Central Command Gen. John Abizaid, and Gen. Peter Chiarelli, the Army’s former no. 2 commander in Iraq — segue comfortably into each officer’s education in classrooms and in battle.

Casey and Abizaid, perhaps unfairly, have absorbed much criticism for the war’s failures (both took fire from John McCain in Senate appearances), but Petraeus is golden because of the surge and the path-breaking counterinsurgency doctrine he devised with a team of strategists.

Does Petraeus have flaws? Sure. As the authors write, the Army catchphrase “Hoo-ah” is supposed to be “uttered in a throaty roar.” When he initially arrived for a tour at Fort Campbell, Ky., “Petraeus’s ‘hoo-ah’ sounded flat and unconvincing, causing his officers to cringe.”

Considering what he did in Iraq, maybe America can forgive that.

The Fourth Star

Four Generals & The Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army

by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe Crown