RE: Petraeus, more than anyone else, has been identified with the intensified military campaign in Afghanistan which, according to critics of the policy, has reduced prospects of a political settlement by alienating Taliban leaders who might otherwise be coaxed into peace talks.
This tells me than Petraeus is a WARRIOR more than a politician. His main task is to crush the enemy until they are rendered helpless, but the administration would not allow him to finish his job.
Reminds me a lot of George Patton.
After the surrender of May 8, 1945, eliminated the threat of Nazi Germany, Patton was quick to assert the Soviet Union would cease to be an ally of the United States.
He was concerned that some 25,000 American POWs had been liberated from POW camps by the Soviets, but never returned to the US. In fact, he urged his superiors to evict the Soviets from central and eastern Europe. Patton thought that the Red Army was weak, under-supplied, and vulnerable, and the United States should act on these weaknesses before the Soviets could consolidate their position.
In this regard, he told then-Undersecretary of War Robert P. Patterson that the “point system” being used to demobilize Third Army troops was destroying it and creating a vacuum that the Soviets would exploit.
He said thusly,
“Mr. Secretary, for God’s sake, when you go home, stop this point system; stop breaking up these armies, Let’s keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to these people, the Soviets. This is the only language they understand.”
Asked by Patterson—who became Secretary of War a few months later—what he would do, Patton replied: “I would have you tell the Red Army where their border is, and give them a limited time to get back across. Warn them that if they fail to do so, we will push them back across it.
To make a long story short, he was not given the permission to crush the Soviets and the rest is history... a 45 year cold war that only the steely resolve of Reagan/Thatcher/Pope John Paul II helped to end.
Were they in the end ?
I know some Soviet POWs begged not to return as thety knew they faced camps, trials etc but the Allies sent them back to Stalin anyway.