Does Bush deserve praise for the "surge"'s success?

That was the question raised by a website called The Moderate Voice.  This was my reply:

Bush’s traits overlap with those of actually virtuous people. Thus his stubbornness at times will look like strength of character; his conscious dumbing-down of his speech at times will look like he’s got the common touch; and his warlike posturing at times will look like he’s an actual warrior.

In the case of the “surge” it has taken him the length of WWII to realize that you have to hold the ground you take or the enemy will take it back. Let’s see, how long has that been a military principle? Several millenia I’d wager. Talk about reinventing the wheel.

Another equally ancient principle is that war doesn’t solve political issues–however, it’s often a necessary precondition (something lefties rarely acknowledge). In this case, given that we’re up to our eyeballs in Iraq (and that’s a huge given, I realize), we can neither stay nor go without paying a terrible price in a variety of terrible ways. There is no easy/simple/satisfying solution. None. Even though we should never have gone in, that doesn’t have any bearing whatsoever on what we should do now. If only it did–that would make things a lot easier to figure out.

And don’t forget that one of these terrible prices is what’s going on in “Afghanistan, which will never get solved until or unless Al Quaeda’s and the Taliban’s stronghold in Pakistan is eliminated. Another potential price is China possibly deciding that we’re too entangled in Iraq to defend Taiwan, leading China to invade and conquer Taiwan soon after the Olympics. These are just two outstanding flashpoints. There are others as well. People all over the world carefully examine every move America makes, and then decide what moves they’ll make.

So taking all that into account, should we praise Bush for starting to do part of the right thing four years late? Yes we should. Centrists show they’re centrists by always giving the devil his due. That’s what “nonpartisan” means.

But now what will he do with the reduced level of violence there? Iraq’s million-odd Christians (many from families that have been in Iraq for literally thousands of years) are nearly all in exile today in Syria and Jordan, expelled by the forces we set loose when we decapitated Iraq’s government. Southern Iraq is more or less a province of Iran. Kurdistan is doing relatively well. Baghdad and western Iraq are still war zones, albeit at a lower simmer.

And the “government” of Iraq shows no interest in compromise with the Sunnis. The purpose of the “surge” was to make peace possible between Iraq’s opposed sectarian factions and apportion the country’s oil wealth fairly. But the “government” there appears to regard the current situation simply as a time to rearm and regroup for the coming civil war. As do many Sunnis.

I’ll give Bush plenty of praise if he can crack that nut.