"Imagine," writes Michael Kinsley, "that you had been told in 2003 that when George W. Bush finished his second term, dozens of American soldiers and hundreds of Iraqis would be dying violently every month; that a major American goal would be getting the Iraqi government to temper its "de-Baathification" campaign so that Saddam Hussein's former henchmen could start running things again (because they know how); and "only" 100,000 American troops would be needed to sustain this equilibrium. You might have several words to describe this situation, but success would not be one of them." Obama also put it well last night: The surge has been a tactical success masking a strategic blunder. We've tamped down on violence, but changed none of the underlying realities of the conflict, nor even discovered a clear pathway pointing towards reconciliation. Rather the opposite, in fact. We now see no pathway towards reconciliation, and our "bottom-up" strategy to rout al-Qaeda has been to heavily arm Sunni tribes who would sooner turn violently against the central government than submit to its authority. Again, there are a lot of words for this strategy, but success isn't one of them.
