Skip Navigation

The Surge

By James Fallows

It is hard for Americans to keep talking about Iraq. Who was right and wrong about the war before it started, whether it could have been handled better once under way—these are arguments from a long time ago, and ultimately pointless. Presidential candidates must offer plans about what comes next, but the reality is that no one knows. Meanwhile, the ethnic politics and shifting alignments and steps forward and back in Iraqi governmental structure make it hard for anyone except the experts to follow the action. The experts—and the minority of American families directly touched by service and sacrifice in the drawn-out war.

What Americans can talk about is “the surge.” This is a concept connected to an impressive man, Army General David Petraeus, who is also controversial enough to be interesting. The surge is connected to an important intellectual trend: the revival of counterinsurgency, or COIN, strategy for the U.S. military, with its emphasis on patient, person-to-person skills rather than on super-precise weaponry. And it has offered supporters of the war something that seemed lost since 2003: the chance for a new start, with things done right this time.

But a year after the surge began, more U.S. troops were in Iraq than when it started, and the argument for keeping them there had descended into circular reasoning. Either the new strategy was working so well that it shouldn’t be interrupted, or else things were still so precarious that the U.S. couldn’t afford to withdraw now. We were back to the impossibility of talking about Iraq.

Back to The 11 1/2 Biggest Ideas of the Year

Presented by

More at The Atlantic

Why Do Asian Americans Have the Worst Long-Term Unemployment? Why Asian-Americans Have the Worst Long-Term Joblessness
Why Won't Mitt Romney Disavow Birther Donald Trump? Why Won't Mitt Romney Disavow Donald Trump?
Oh Hey, Motorola and RIM Called: They Want to Go Back to 2004 and Try Again Flashback to 2004: Motorola and RIM Ruled the Phone Market
External Eyes: Vision Technology Takes Another Step Forward Technology Gets One Step Closer to Glasses for the Nearly Blind
Meet Google+ Local, Zagat-Fueled Competition for Yelp Meet Google+ Local, Zagat-Fueled Competition for Yelp

The Biggest Story in Photos

Olympic Portraits, Part I: American Athletes

May 30, 2012
No Gatorade: Celebrating New York City's Pick-up Basketball Scene
Watch More Video

On Newsstands Now

Subscribe and SAVE 59%
10 issues JUST $2.45/COPY

The Atlantic Monthly

David H. Freedman on smartphone apps and the perfected self, Mark Bowden on being in the dumb kids' class, James Parker on Glenn Beck, Isaac Chotiner on P. G. Wodehouse, and more

Browse back issues of The Atlantic that have appeared on the Web. From September 1995 to the present, the archive is essentially complete, with the exception of a few articles, the online rights to which are held exclusively by the authors.

See All Back Issues: September 1995
To The Present »

Premium Archive

For a small fee you can now access more than a century of Atlantic Monthly articles in our online archive. The archive includes articles from 1857 to the present.

Prices » | Login for Saved Items » | Help »

Sort by:
Dates:
From: 
To: 
Author:  (optional)
Title:  (optional)

Facebook

Newsletters

Sign up to receive our free newsletters

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)

(sample)