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The other day, McCain told Katie Couric:
Colonel McFarland was contacted by one of the major Sunni sheiks. Because of the surge we were able to go out and protect that sheik and others. And it began the Anbar awakening. I mean, that's just a matter of history.The only problem is that it's not true. McFarland had left Iraq by the time the first of the surge's troops arrived. His contact with the Sunni sheiks was independent of, and in fact predated, the change in American military strategy. As a matter of history, McCain is wrong. Worse, he's wrong in a way that suggests a confused understanding of the relationship between the Anbar Awakening and the surge. The two, at best, reinforced each other. But there is no sense in which the surge was causal for the Sunni rebellion against al Qaeda. McCain, who is running a campaign based off his superior understanding of Iraq's internal dynamics which supposedly gives him a superior sense of the appropriate strategy, has convinced himself otherwise. That's a huge deal.
