Just read the FP response by mcjoan to Joe Klein discussing why General Petraeus won't be able to dig us out of the Iraq mess with President Bush's "surge" of American troops.
That got me thinking about the origin of Petraeus' name, which led me to writing this diary.
From Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book the Twelfth:
I saw Petraeus' arms employ'd around
A well-grown oak, to root it from the ground.
This way, and that, he wrench'd the fibrous bands;
The trunk was like a sappling, in his hands,
And still obey'd the bent: while thus he stood,
Perithous' dart drove on; and nail'd him to the wood;
So, Petraeus is "employ'd"/deployed to remove a well-entrenched insurgency from Iraq. He pushes and pulls and tries as hard as he can using all the force of the U.S. military to uproot an insurgency that appears (on the surface) weak in comparison. But the insurgency/oak budges not, and ultimately this distraction is Petraeus downfall. He finds himself doomed and forever connected to that very thing against which he was struggling.
Maybe I took too many English Lit classes in college, but the comparison seemed obvious to me.