And there couldn’t have been a more perfect vignette for the theme of our Sports columnist Mark Starr’s excellent piece on football as the metaphor for America. Starr argues that in the end of the day the gridiron doesn’t work as the organizing principle that captures who we are. We are just too complex a country, Starr writes, to be defined by any one sport. And after all the new President is all about basketball.

Petraeus is a man who captures the complexity of America, and who understands the complexity of the challenges the military faces in its struggle against terrorism. I watched Petraeus standing at mid-field at the start of the game and couldn’t help but think, he is about to toss a much more important coin in Afghanistan.

The planned troop surge in Afghanistan is a mission of chance in which he is hoping that it might help stabilize The Forgotten War. For the last six years, George W. Bush’s administration neglected the situation in Afghanistan, leaving the intelligence gathering and special operations to what was at best the B-team. President Obama has vowed to change course and double the number of US troops in Afghanistan. General Petraeus, as the head of Central Command, is completely supportive of the move and indeed had been pushing for it behind the scenes in the Bush presidency for a long time.

In the last six years, I have had a chance to observe General Petraeus up close. I was covering his 101st Airborne Division in Mosul in the first phase of the war; I met with him again in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas where he and his team re-wrote the military counter-insurgency manual, I was embedded with some of his troops during the surge in Baghdad in March 2008; and I interviewed him in Washington where he unflinchingly stood before congress and told a bitterly divided country that there was no military victory in Iraq to be achieved, only a “political solution.” The surge, he said, would be the only way for the US to help Iraq find that political solution.

And Iraqi voters who safely made their way to the polls this time walked in a path cleared by the successes of Petraeus’ surge. It was Petraeus’ military leadership that made yesterday possible, and that should be recognized in all the analysis that will be going on about the results.

Our two correspondents in the field, Tom Peter and Jane Arraf, have done an outstanding job keeping us up to date on the details on the ground.

Arraf, who is also there reporting for the Christian Science Monitor, is our regional editor for the Middle East. She brings to our coverage the eye of an experienced veteran who has covered Iraq since the US led invasion in 2003 and many years before that. Her Reporter’s Notebook today from northern Iraq is a fine example of what it is to gather ‘ground truth.’

So keep checking on GlobalPost coverage of Iraq for Jane’s big-picture, election analysis which will be coming in the next few days.

The voting in Iraq came on the last day of a month in which Iraq recorded its lowest levels of violence and killing since the US led invasion began in 2003.

According to the AFP, January’s death toll was down 42 percent from December, which was at the time the lowest figure for three years. Iraq is still a very dangerous place with a total of 191 civilians, soldiers and police killed during the last 30 days. Eight candidates were killed in the run-up to the vote. And some analysts have argued that the relative calm may also be simply because those insurgents and other groups still fighting had decided not to strike. Voter turnout was low at about 55 percent. Still, who could deny that Iraq is on the road to stability even if it is not yet there?
The country has undeniably seen a turn around since the execution of the surge strategy which was conceived by Petraeus, who more than any other military leader in America has the intellectual capacity and sheer stamina to confront the extraordinary challenges that lie ahead for the US and its diminishing role in Iraq and its new level of engagement in Afghanistan.

Whether Petraeus’ newly forming strategy to increase troop levels can succeed in Afghanistan the way his surge appears to be succeeding Iraq is, well, a coin toss.

It was Napolean who, when asked what kind of generals he wants, answered, “Lucky ones.”

Let’s hope Petraeus calls it right in Afghanistan.