Despite the best efforts of George W. Bush and John McCain to sabotage it; yes the Surge worked. It worked because most people inside Iraq now really believe that the United States will be leaving Iraq soon. No thanks to President Bush on that score; since the President still refuses to rule out a permanent U.S. presence in Iraq. And no thanks to Senator McCain either who publicly muses that the U.S. military may stay in Iraq for a hundred years if necessary. The Surge, a decision to send 30,000 more American soldiers into Iraq, could easily have been viewed by Iraqi citizens as evidence of American re-entrenchment .in their homeland. .And who could have blamed them?
Most Republican leaders remain loath to give Iraq's citizens any concrete assurances that the American military occupation will be short lived. Instead the Bush Administration acts like the Green Zone in Baghdad is the Panama Canal Zone resurrected or perhaps our new Guantanomo Bay. Where does the Bush Administration get the authority to argue with Iraq's government over how soon it can ask the U.S. to withdraw our forces? Why on Earth is the largest U.S. Embassy on Earth being constructed in Iraq today, if America's role in Iraq tomorrow was destined to be minimal? Whose war is it, anyway?
John McCain would have us believe that at root this is America's war, one that "we" can't afford to lose, and for years the policies of the Bush Administration led many Iraqis to reach the same conclusion. And during those years large numbers of Iraq's home bred citizens fought tenaciously against what they perceived as an American neo -colonial military occupation of their homeland. As it is throughout the Middle East, nationalist as well as religious sentiments remain strong inside Iraq. Deeply rooted suspicions that the United States sought a geographic long term military foothold in Iraq fueled armed resistance to America's armed forces stationed inside of Iraq.
Seemingly unbeknownst to George W. Bush, the U.S. military presence inside Iraq crossed the line of diminishing returns. The open ended nature of our military commitment in Iraq beget open ended armed resistance to a U.S. long term presence there. Even among those Iraqi factions not adamant that the U.S. withdraw post haste, a distant hazy horizon for an eventual American pull back dulled any sense of the urgency needed to make the difficult compromises required to bring about real national reconciliation for Iraq. While the U.S. remained committed to clamping an external safety lid on Iraq's civil violence, jockeying for leverage for ultimate future power became a higher priority for Iraq's domestic warring factions than accommodating the agendas of internal potential political and religious adversaries.
But something happened to change that deadly status quo inside Iraq, something that fortunately predated "the surge". Call it the Iraqization of Iraq's ongoing civil war. Call it a dawning realization inside of Iraq that the American public would not allow the American government to keeping sending American men and women to their death inside Iraq for very much longer. Call it "the switch". Call it Iraq's war now.
Does Iraq face real and potential foreign foes? Of course it does, we are after all talking about the Middle East. But the primary Iranian incentive to destabilize Iran turns out to be Iran's opposition to a permanent U.S. military foothold being established on their border inside Iraq. And Al Quada in Iraq has ceased to be the dominant destabilizing force active inside of Iraq. Al Quada lost the upper hand with the Anbar Awakening of Iraq Sunnis, which even John McCain knows by now happened before "the surge".
Sheik al-Rishawi is widely credited with being the primal force behind the start of the Anbar Awakening. According to a Washington Post article dated Sunday, March 25, 2007:
"...Al-Rishawi founded the Anbar Salvation Council in September (2006) with dozens of Sunni tribes. Many of the new newly friendly leaders are believed to have at least tacitly supported the insurgency in the past, though al-Rishawi said he never did.
"I was always against these terrorists," al-Rishawi said in an interview inside his American-guarded compound, adjusting a pistol holstered around his waist. "They brainwashed people into thinking Americans were against them. They said foreigners wanted to occupy our land and destroy our mosques. They told us, 'We'll wage a jihad. We'll help you defeat them.'"
The difficult part was convincing others it wasn't true, and that "building an alliance with the Americans was the only solution," al-Rishawi said."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/con tent/article/2007/03/25/AR2007032500600. html
Central to convincing Iraqi's, many of whom had previously supported the insurgency against U.S. troops, that Americans were not interested in occupying Iraq and "destroying mosques" was evidence mounting back inside America that the American people wanted the U.S. out of Iraq as soon as possible, and that the U.S. government was starting to change in response to public pressure. Throughout the summer and fall of 2006 the race to control Congress hinged on Democrats campaigning nationally to bring an end to the open ended commitment to of forces to Iraq with firm timelines for U.S. withdrawal.
The previously improbable scenario of Democrats wresting both Houses of Congress away from Republican control in 2006 became reality, and world wide that shift in Congress was perceived as a mandate for Democrats to establish a timeline for a U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq".
That shift preceded "the surge", and that shift enabled "the surge" to later succeed Regardless of John McCain's poor vision, the handwriting has clearly been on the wall, both in America and in Iraq. The U.S. is very unlikely to remain in Iraq for 100 years. The U.S. is unlikely to remain in Iraq for two years after the November Presidential election, with the public mood strongly supporting Democratic chances. All throughout the prolonged contest to determine the Democratic presidential nominee, all of the leading Democratic candidates were firmly on record supporting a timeline for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq. Whether Clinton or Obama, there was never any doubt what position the U.S. would take with a new Democratic President in 2009.
And that's why the surge worked. The wrong message didn't get sent. The surge was not mistaken as indicative of a U.S. resolve to remain inside Iraq for as long as it took for America to achieve its national strategic interests inside of Iraq, whatever they might be. Instead "the surge" was rightfully viewed as a final stop gap effort by a lame duck Republican Administration to give Iraq's leaders the breathing room they needed to come to grips with the fact that it is Iraq's war to win now, not America's. And with a Democratic Presidency looming on the near political horizon, the time for Iraqi's to get their own house in order was and remains: Now.
It took that switch in attitude to enable our additional troops to do what was asked of them with "the surge", and do it they did, very well indeed. That's because Iraq isn't listening to George W. Bush now, nor to John McCain. It is listening to Barack Obama, and counting the months until a complete U.S. withdrawal from its sovereign state.
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