IT'S ALL HAPPENING WITH THE SURGE!

It must not be easy being David Brooks these days. A moderate, right of center, self-professed conservative who chafes under what conservatism has become post Reagan, Mr. Brooks bemoans the wanton, hedonistic "Greed is Good - Debt is Better" culture that has engulfed America since the Reagan Revolution began. Yet, he still refuses to see that it is the Christian capitalist, war economy based conservatism that is at fault. Yes, the Bushidos messed up big time: Katrina, Iraq, Afghanistan, etc. But, Mr. Brooks offers one last defense to an increasingly irrelevant Mr. Bush: he was right about the surge! Come again?

In his haste to equate cocksure surge opponents with cocksure war supporters - who, incidentally, still support both the surge and the war - Mr. Brooks glosses over what the surge was supposed to do and what it has accomplished. The curious use of "they" to cloak surge "opponents" with anonymity, lest his ruse be outed for what it is: a smear, Mr. Brooks ignores what has been reported in the op-ed pages of the New York Times (22 June 2008) in his own op-ed piece that appeared today, 24 June 2008, in the Times. On Sunday, in their trademark report card on Iraq, Michael O'Hanlan et al. gave the political aspects of the surge a 5.5 on a scale of 10. Whatever the basis for their evaluation, we still have a long way to go in Iraq just in terms of the politics.

As for the military side of the equation, many surge opponents were in reality surge skeptics. On the one hand, given the "success" of the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad and the erection of barriers to prevent unauthorized entrance into cleansed communities, a decline in sectarian violence was probably forseeable. Periodic eruptions such as occasional suicide bombings were to be expected. On the other hand, what many surge skeptics were unaware about was the extent to which commanders on the ground had begun the process of reconciliation with Sunni tribal opponents of Al Quaeda in Anbar Province. The news media, essentially holed up in the Green Zone, barely reported on this crucial development. Now, we have a large number of Sunni tribesman, armed by and bankrolled by the American military, tamping down on insurgent violence in the countryside.

Whether these new Sunni allies can be integrated into the Shiite dominated Iraqi Army is a vexing question. If they cannot and the Baghdad government cannot find a way to reconcile Sunni and Shia (and thereby score higher on the O'Hanlan scale), then it is just possible that we've armed yet another side in a looming civil war.

And the surge? Neither is it an unqualified success or an abject failure. Nor does it point in any direction. forward. Candidate McCain believes that the surge's "success" might allow us to retain military bases in Iraq for years to come, despite the Iraqi public's refusal to accept continued occupation and the Maliki government's resistance to the proposed Status of Forces agreement. Obamistas believe that the surge, however success is defined, should lead to an eventual stand-down of the U.S. military and a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

Without pressure on the Maliki government, Iraq will never stand up for itself. But the pressure required does not come from the imposition of a one-sided Status of Forces agreement. Rather, it comes about by holding the Maliki government accountable to the political goals that were part and parcel of the "surge". In short, until an 8 or 9 is achieved on the O'Hanlan scale, this war opponent remains a surge skeptic and so should you!