The Atlantic Community surveyed some European foreign policy thinkers on how America should approach Iraq, and the results were interesting:
Many of those interviewed focused on military strategy as a means to political reconstruction in Iraq, rather than an end in itself. “Winning” and “losing” the war, a theme in the American discourse, was not discussed. The US focus on military progress was, in fact, largely viewed as damaging to priorities in rebuilding the country. Dr. Reidar Visser, a research fellow at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs who also runs the Iraq website Historiae, observed that the “main problem [with the current strategy] is the heavy emphasis on security instead of creative political initiatives to encourage national reconciliation.”
The surge sort of dramatized this effect by coinciding with a complete loss of faith in the Maliki government's ability to pursue consolidation: The security situation and the political situation really aren't linked, at least not in that direction. The idea that stability would accelerate reconciliation was always backwards. There's a lack of stability because there's an absence of reconciliation* -- and the relationship there is causal. The surge was like trying to stop someone with a cold from sneezing by pinching their nose really hard. It didn't cure the cold, and it sort of created a mess.
*And because there are jihadists targeting American forces.
