The Surge, Defended

Kevin Drum points to the smartest - because it is the most honest - defense yet:

At the end of 2006, (a) the violence stemming from the bombing of the Golden Mosque had started to burn itself out, (b) the Awakening movement had begun turning Sunni tribes against al-Qaeda in Iraq, (c) ongoing sectarian cleansing, as horrible as it was, had created an opportunity for greater stability in Baghdad, and (d) Muqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire, if we could persuade him to continue it, removed a huge source of sectarian violence. In other words, the security situation in Iraq was on the cusp of something potentially dramatic, and it was possible that a small nudge might make an outsized difference. The surge was that nudge.

But the neocon right needs to talk as if the extra troops made all the difference. The truth is: they were shrewdly deployed to help galvanize a multiplicity of already-existing trends among Iraqis. But if you begin to describe Iraq as a sovereign country, able to make its own decisions and able to restore some level of non-chaos to its own communities, with the US merely nudging, the case for staying there for ever diminishes.

The neocons aren't stupid. They always advance the arguments that help sustain the case for more American control everywhere, indefinitely.