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Lawrence Kaplan is being admirably straightforward here:
SPIEGEL ONLINE: Was the increase in US troops at the start of 2007 also partially responsible for the progress you describe?Kaplan: This is the subject of fierce debate in the US -- because to ascribe progress to the "surge" means to say that George W. Bush did something right. I think it is impossible to disentangle the progress that comes from the tribes switching sides, from the new American strategy, from the fact that Shiite radical Muqtada al-Sadr has stood down and the surge. My sense is that the influx of 30,000 new American troops holds the least explanatory power. Most important were the tribes. And their switching sides predates the surge.What Kaplan elides here is that the definition of "progress" is actually quite contested. Is progress a short-term reduction in violence that comes from an unsustainable increase in American force and troop presence? Is it arming and empowering Sunni tribes who've little interest in submitting to a centralized government? Is it waging war against Sadr and other figures with grassroots legitimacy? A lot of the frustration liberals have had with the Surge commentary is that the original plan behind the Surge was to increase security in order to accelerate political reconciliation. Security did increase, but reconciliation has arguably backslid. Some even argue that the Surge has made reconciliation less likely in the long-run. Is that progress, or is it regression? Indeed, I think the question of the Surge has actually been overwhelmed by the question of Bush, to the detriment of folks on both sides. Rather than argue about the patient dying on the table, we've been debating whether we like the doctor. But what else were we going to do? Until you change the doctor, you can't change the treatment.
