Hitch on the "Surge"

He's not buying it:

The critical thing about the much-bruited surge is that it, too, belongs in the all-important realm of the symbolic. A few thousand extra troops in Baghdad and in Anbar are of scant use in themselves, unless they in some way represent a commitment to stick to Iraq no matter what. And if the Iraq to which they stick is in fact symbolized by Maliki's surly confessional regime, then the United States is not baby-sitting a civil war so much as deciding to take part in it.