The resentment of Sunni tribal leaders against al-Qaeda’s highhanded brutality predated the surge — but the surge gave those leaders the confidence and ability to oppose al-Qaeda. ~Michael Gerson

By more or less common agreement, the Awakening began in or around November 2006.  It was spurred on by the smart counterinsurgency work of American soldiers.  It was not a product of the “surge” of brigades that the President announced in January.  Typically, in the study of history we don’t assume that cause comes after effect.  Either our people were already succeeding in Anbar before the “surge,” making the “surge” redundant and potentially unwise, or they were not and the “surge” was vitally necessary.  (Or both efforts are fundamentally unsustainable because they rely on empowering elements who are violently opposed to the new order our government has been trying to establish in Iraq.)   

Some will say that counterinsurgency success is counterinsurgency success, but if we are judging the merits of a particular tactical plan details are of the essence.  If the change of fortune in Anbar was beginning without the “surge,” that suggests that the “surge” was unnecessary in the one area that has seen marked improvement, while “surge” boosters struggle vainly to demonstrate sufficient satisfaction of the administration‘s standards of success.  If the emerging wisdom is that pinning the success of the “surge” on Iraqi political reconciliation was foolish and a misguided waste, then war supporters are finally coming around, eight months too late, to the conclusions that opponents had reached in January.  If political reconciliation at the center is now made out to be so very last winter (the fall fashion is arming sectarian killers for future mayhem), that is not what “surge” supporters have been saying all year long. 

Skeptics may be forgiven for doubting claims of success, since boosters have made every event into some kind of vindication for the “surge.”  When bombings and deaths were on the rise, we were told that this was proof that the “surge” was working; when bombings and deaths were declining, the “surge” was working.  When Sadr disappeared, the “surge” was working, but now that he’s back it is working even better.  When the Iraqi parliament gets bombed, it shows that “we” are getting to “them”; when the Yezidis of Erbil are massacred in multiple bombings, victory is at hand.  And so on ad nauseam.  This week the story is that conditions are improving and that this is proof that the plan is working, but you can bet your last cent that if things begin getting uglier the same people will find an entirely new way to explain why the plan is still really working, but in a new, unexpected way.