Much has been made over the past couple of months over how John McCain was ‘right’ about the US escalation in Iraq (or ‘surge’), and Barack Obama was wrong. Not many of the people making this argument, however, have given much indication of what the criteria for measuring this success should be. For them, I think, the surge’s success is self-evident. Fewer Iraqis and American soldiers are being killed, and since this reduction in violence occurred in the wake of the surge, the surge must therefore be the reason behind it. Selling the surge: Republicans take credit for reduced violence Elsewhere, other commentators have argued that the surge might not be responsible, or solely responsible, for this decline in the death rate. It is argued, for example, that Shiite and Sunni neighborhoods had been largely ethnically cleansed in Baghdad before the surge, meaning that the death-rate would have declined, anyway. Yet on both sides of the ‘surge’ argument, attention has been paid mostly to events taking place during the period of the surge itself (March 2007 until mid-2008, roughly). Less focus has been placed upon how the surge might ultimately figure into American interests in the region, or the interests of the Iraqis American troops are ostensibly protecting. What are the goals of the United States in Iraq? Is our objective to occupy that country as long as possible with a minimum of casualties? If so, then the surge can likely be judged a success. But if the United States had begun to withdraw from Iraq in 2007, rather than send still more troops over there, we would be largely out of that country by now. Think of it: no more American soldiers dying in that country at all, and no more billions of dollars wasted each month in the cause of...what was the cause again? People argue, of course, that the Iraqis need us. Without American soldiers, “ancient” Sunni and Shiite tensions will rise to the fore again, sending them to one another’s throats. Please. Shiite and Sunni Iraqis have lived together for centuries without Americans there to help them. It was the American invasion which transformed sectarianism in Iraq into an issue worth killing over. Whatever the reasons for sectarianism, however, it is also clear that it is an issue in today's Iraq—no matter how peaceful things may be today relative to one year ago. The United States must therefore ensure that its eventual withdrawal from Iraq is orderly, and that a withdrawal doesn’t contribute to a serious escalation in violence. Some kind of security arrangement—perhaps involving soldiers from other countries and certainly involving Iraqi power brokers—must be put in place before we go. Which leads me to my last point with respect to the surge. During the months immediately after the US invasion, we had a period of relative stability in Iraq, before the insurgency and Sunni-Shiite fighting began in earnest. Instead of quickly drawing up a timetable for withdrawing most of our troops (we wanted to inspect suspected WMD facilities and capture Saddam Hussein, we said, but how many soldiers would that have required?), we disbanded the Iraqi Army and otherwise made it clear that we were there for the long term. Today, we likewise have a window of opportunity to begin withdrawing from Iraq from a position of strength, for it will be much easier to leave that country during a period of ‘stability’ than one of absolute chaos. But the ‘success’ of the surge, I fear, has led to a dangerous complacency among Americans, who are now more concerned with gas prices than Iraq. This window of opportunity won’t last forever. Iraq is not going to be like postwar Germany or Japan. It hasn’t been so far and this isn’t going to change. Sooner or later, resistance to the American presence is going to become widespread again, which could lead to a much more complicated scenario for withdrawal. So has the surge served American interests? Well, it has prolonged the American presence in Iraq, and its supposed ‘success’ has greatly diminished the sense of urgency Americans felt in 2006-2007 to begin a withdrawal. So, for the Bush administration, I would say, the surge clearly has been a success. But for the rest of us? I don’t think so.